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      'We are living the issues': record number of women of color run for Congress

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      The US presidential election may be dominated by two older white men, but away from the battle for the White House a record number of women of color are running for Congress in 2020 – as US politics continues to be dragged, slowly, towards being representative of the country’s population.In November, 117 women of color are running for Congress as Democrats or Republicans. And a record 298 women in total are running for the House of Representatives on a major party ticket, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.The new high builds on 2018’s midterm elections, when a historic number of women won seats in the House. Among that number are 61 Black women, 32 Latina women, and six Native American women – record numbers for each group.In the Senate, 20 women are running as Democrats or Republicans, a decrease from 2018, but overall, the US is seeing a rising trend.“This year’s numbers are a positive sign that 2018 wasn’t necessarily an anomaly,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics.“What this year also points to positively is a continued diversification of the women who are running for office and who are getting nominations.”Women are almost 50% of Democratic nominees this year, Dittmar said. They make up a much smaller proportion of Republican nominees – although the GOP has seen a spike in female candidates compared with previous years.Here are just a few of the women to watch in November:Candace ValenzuelaIf Candace Valenzuela can win in Texas’s 24th congressional district, she would become the first Black Latina in Congress. The district has been represented by a Republican since 2005, but Democrats have a real chance of flipping it in November.“We’re seeing trailblazing women of color step up and run for office all across the country,” Valenzuela told the Guardian.“But women like me aren’t running to be the ‘first’, we’re running to serve our communities, by lowering healthcare costs, stopping the spread of this virus, and getting folks back to work safely.”A former school board representative, Valenzuela has been endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and progressive and centrist Democrats alike. She faces the Republican candidate Beth Van Duyne, whom Trump has endorsed.“I ran for my local school board to ensure every north Texan has access to the opportunities that enabled me to overcome childhood homelessness and become the first in my family to go to college,” Valenzuela said.As we see more women and women of color running for and winning seats in office, we’re seeing the focus of our elected officials shiftCandace Valenzuela“As I fought for my community, I saw the opportunities that lifted me up were, and continue to be, under attack by Donald Trump and the corporate special interests that dominate his administration.”In a campaign ad, Valenzuela recalls sleeping in a children’s swimming pool outside a gas station after the family fled domestic abuse. She believes she can better represent people who might be struggling.“It’s time that the folks in power reflect the communities they serve. As we see more women and women of color running for and winning seats in office, we’re seeing the focus of our elected officials shift towards working families and the challenges they face.”Marquita BradshawMarquita Bradshaw’s victory in Tennessee’s Senate Democratic primary was scarcely believable, given the relative pittance she spent during her campaign. Bradshaw spent less than $10,000 – James Mackler, an attorney endorsed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, spent $1.5m.She became the first Black woman to be a major party nominee for statewide office in Tennessee, and the only Black woman running as a Democrat or Republican for Senate.“Black women have been the heart of the Democratic party for years,” Bradshaw told the Guardian.“We vote our values but with the increasing social tensions and awareness, Black women knew it was time to step into our power. For too long, we have been kept out of the conversation.“But we are living the issues – racism, classism, sexism. I am living the issues. Black women are the cornerstones of their communities, active in churches, schools, healthcare. Our voices need to be heard and collectively, we are taking the leap.”Bradshaw is an environmental activist who supports the progressive Green New Deal, and she said the toxic damage from a military depot in her hometown of Memphis birthed her activism.For all the progress in making Congress more diverse, women still only make up about 25% of the body – something Bradshaw said must change.“It is necessary for the demographics of the Senate to represent the demographics of the country. It’s the only way to level the playing field,” she said.It is necessary for the demographics of the Senate to represent the demographics of the countryMarquita Bradshaw“Women experience the world in different ways than men. We are the caretakers and nurturers. We will introduce bills that support the environmental, educational, and economic wellbeing of our country. It’s all connected. We can’t address one without the other and we can’t fix one without fixing them all.”Bradshaw faces another uphill battle in November. Her Republican opponent, Bill Hagerty has tied his fortunes to Donald Trump in the election – the president won Tennessee by 26 points in 2016. The last Democrat elected to the US Senate in Tennessee was Al Gore in 1990.Cori BushBush, a nurse and ordained pastor, broke a decades-long legacy when she defeated Lacy Clay in the Democratic primary for Missouri’s 1st congressional district. Clay has represented the district since 2001, having taken over the seat from his father, Bill Clay, who had been in office since 1969.Bush rose to prominence in Missouri as an activist against police brutality in Ferguson, after Michael Brown was shot dead by a police officer in 2014. In an interview with the Guardian in August, Bush said she feared for the safety of her children following the history of police killings of black people.“With the climate of our country and our world I worry about my children. My son is 20 years old, he is taller than me. He’s a black boy. I worry about [him], every single day. Every minute of the day. I’m not exaggerating,” Bush said. More

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      Trump 2016 campaign 'targeted 3.5m black Americans to deter them from voting'

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      Donald Trump’s 2016 US presidential election campaign has been accused of actively seeking to deter 3.5 million black Americans in battleground states from voting by deliberately targeting them with negative Hillary Clinton ads on Facebook.The secret effort concentrated on 16 swing states, several narrowly won by Trump after the black Democrat vote collapsed.The claims have come from an investigation by Channel 4 News, which was leaked a copy of a vast election database it says was used by the Trump campaign in 2016.Comprising the records of 198 million Americans, and containing details about their domestic and economic status acquired from market research firms, the investigation claimed voters were segmented into eight categories.One was marked “deterrence”. Those placed in the special category – voters thought likely to vote for Clinton or not at all – were disproportionately black.According to the investigation, the Trump campaign’s goal was to dissuade them from backing the Democrat entirely by targeting them with “dark adverts” on their Facebook feeds, which heavily attacked Clinton and, in some cases, argued she lacked sympathy with African Americans.The effort is said to have been devised in part by Cambridge Analytica, the notorious election consultant that ceased trading last year following revelations that it used dirty tricks to help win elections around the world and had gained unauthorised access to tens of millions of Facebook profiles.In Michigan, a state that Trump won by 10,000 votes, 15% of voters are black. But they represented 33% of the special deterrence category in the secret database, meaning black voters were apparently disproportionately targeted by anti-Clinton ads.In Wisconsin, where the Republicans won by 30,000, 5.4% of voters are black, but 17% of the deterrence group. According the Channel 4, that amounted to more than a third of black voters in the state overall, all placed in the group to be sent anti-Clinton material on their Facebook feeds.Attacks ads that were used by Trump’s digital campaign included one known as the “super-predator” commercial, featuring a video clip of controversial remarks made by Clinton in 1996, which the Republicans claimed referred to African Americans.Arguing that it was necessary “to have an organised effort against gangs”, and their members Clinton said: “They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators – no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel.”The Democrat apologised for using those words shortly after being confronted by Black Lives Matter activists about them in February 2016, but the language was picked up by Trump during the campaign and heavily recycled online.Another attack ad reportedly came from a political action committee also run by Cambridge Analytica. It features a young black woman who appears to be a Clinton supporter abandoning her script to say: “I just don’t believe what I’m saying.”When reminded that she is an actor, she replies that she is “not that good” of an actorJamal Watkins, the vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said it was shocking and troubling that there was a covert attempt to suppress the black vote in 2016.“So, we use data – similar to voter file data – but it’s to motivate, persuade and encourage folks to participate. We don’t use the data to say who can we deter and keep at home. That just seems, fundamentally, it’s a shift from the notion of democracy,” Watkins told Channel 4.It is estimated that 2 million black voters across the US who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 did not turn out for Hillary Clinton. In Wisconsin, Trump’s vote matched Mitt Romney’s in 2012, but Clinton lost because her vote collapsed. The Democrat polled 230,000 votes fewer than Obama.Key to the Trump victory was putting off black voters in cities like Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In one city ward, where 80% of its 1,440 voters were black, almost half or 44% of the ward was marked as for deterrence, a total of 636 people, 90% of whom were black.Many other factors accounted for Clinton’s defeat, including legislation that was accused of suppressing the black vote.Again, in Wisconsin, the Republican-run state has introduced measures requiring citizens to produce valid voter identification, which it was argued disproportionately affected poor and black voters.The Trump campaign spent $44m (£34m) on Facebook advertising and generated 6m adverts overall. But the passage of time has meant that only a handful of the attack ads used by the Trump campaign have been recorded, and Facebook will not say how many or which ads were used at the time.The company said that “since 2016, elections have changed and so has Facebook – what happened with Cambridge Analytica couldn’t happen today”. It added that it now has “rules prohibiting voter suppression” and was “running the largest voter information campaign in American history”.The Trump campaign, the Republican national committee and the White House all declined to comment.A senior official in the the Trump campaign has previously denied any targeted campaigns against individual groups. More

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      Critics condemn Trump's rewrite of America's legacy of racism in DC speech

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      Donald Trump on Thursday launched an extraordinary attack on American education at a history conference in Washington DC, downplaying America’s historic legacy of slavery and claiming children have been subjected to “decades of leftwing indoctrination”.Speaking at what was dubbed the White House Conference on American History, the president intensified efforts to appeal to his core base of white voters with a historically revisionist speech, while blasting efforts to address systemic racism as divisive.The president specifically attacked the New York Times’ 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning endeavor that was published last year to cast a spotlight on the 400th anniversary of the first slave ship arriving in America.The 1619 Project “warped” the American story, Trump said. The president said the project claimed the US was “founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom”. Trump said children should know “they are citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world”.He also used the appearance to announce plans to establish a commission to promote patriotic education, dubbed the 1776 Commission, that would be tasked with encouraging educators to teach students “about the miracle of American history”.Critics were swift to condemn Trump’s new “patriotic education” plan and his attacks on the 1619 Project, something he said the teaching of which was akin to “child abuse”, with journalists quickly asserting his claims as blatantly false.Pres Trump said this of history to loud applause: “A radical movement is attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance. We can’t let that happen.”Context: A movement is happening to look at America’s flaws and it’s original sins of slavery and stealing land.— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) September 17, 2020
      The president, who called curriculum on race “toxic propaganda, an ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds”, continued his administration’s efforts to restrict the telling of American history in schools to erase a legacy of racism, genocide and imperialism. The president recently threatened to cut funding to California schools that teach the 1619 Project. Trump has already cracked down on anti-racism training sessions in federal agencies.He also argued that America’s founding “set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism and built the most fair, equal and prosperous nation in human history”. But he did not mention the 246 years of slavery in America, including the 89 years it was allowed to continue after the colonies declared independence from England. Nor did the president acknowledge the ongoing fight against racial injustice and police brutality, which has prompted months of protests this year.Responding to the president’s remarks, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, the writer behind the 1619 Project, made an observation on who isn’t included in Trump’s retelling of American history:The White House Conference on American History has not a single Black historian on it. Strange.— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) September 17, 2020
      Hannah-Jones also told the Associated Press that the first amendment to the Constitution abhors government attempts to censor speech and guarantees a free press.“The efforts by the president of the United States to use his powers to censor a work of American journalism by dictating what schools can and cannot teach and what American children should and should not learn should be deeply alarming to all Americans who value free speech,” she said.Meanwhile members of the Trump administration, including education secretary Betsy DeVos, remain silent on the backlash.I tried to ask @BetsyDeVosED why Trump was establishing his commission on patriotic education now just weeks from the election. After all, he’s had four years. Her press team shooed me away.— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) September 17, 2020 More