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      in US Politics

      A win for Joe Biden would only scratch the surface of America’s afflictions | John Mulholland

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      On 18 September, the first day of early voting in the US, Jason Miller, a house painter from Minneapolis, became, according to the Washington Post, one of the first people in the country to vote. He cast his vote for Joe Biden, saying: “I’ve always said that I wanted to be the first person to vote against Donald Trump. For four years, I have waited to do this.” Close to 90 million people have already voted in the US and it is on track to record the highest turnout since 1908.We can thank Donald Trump for that, a man who attracts fierce loyalty from his supporters but who energises his opponents in equal measure. The country has been fixated by the White House occupant for the past four years. But there is a danger that progressives and liberals invest too much faith in Trump’s departure and too little in what will be needed to fix America. Getting rid of Trump might be one thing, fixing America is another.If the president loses, there will be much talk of a new normality and the need for a democratic reset. Hopes will be voiced for a return to constitutional norms. There will be calls for a return of civility in public discourse and a healing of the partisan divide that scars America. All of that is as it should be. But it ought to come with a recognition that America was broken long before it elected Trump and his departure would be no guarantee that the country will be mended. Many of the systemic issues that afflict the US predate Trump.His ugly and dysfunctional presidency has distracted from many of the fundamentals that have beset America for decades, even centuries. But they remain stubbornly in place. If he does lose, America will no longer have Trump to blame. Two two-term Democratic presidents over the past 30 years have not significantly affected the structural issues that corrode US democracy and society, and race is always at their heart. The past few months have drawn further attention to the systemic racism and brutality that characterise much policing. But racism in the States is not confined to the police. In fact, it is not confined at all. More

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      in US Politics

      'I can have a voice': Latino voters set for decisive role in key Arizona county

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      [embedded content]
      Even before she could vote, Imelda Quiroz Beltran had a goal for this election: to register as many Latino voters in Maricopa county as possible – and make sure they cast their ballots.
      Every day for months, she has gone door to door with the non-profit Mi Familia Vota, undeterred by the searing desert sun – zipping across Phoenix’s sprawling concrete-paved neighborhoods in search of eligible voters.
      And then the day came when Beltran registered herself – after she became a naturalized citizen this year.
      “Finally, I can have a voice,” she said. “And this year, it is so important that we all have a voice.”
      Maricopa – which includes Phoenix – is the fastest-growing county in the US. Of its nearly 4.5 million residents, one-third identify as Latino, according to census data.
      While Arizona has voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election but one since 1952, this year, political strategists and pollsters are predicting that Latino voters in Maricopa could play a decisive role in electing Joe Biden to the White House and Democrats up and down the ballot.
      “Whoever wins the Latino vote, is going to win Maricopa county. And whoever wins Maricopa county is going to win Arizona,” said Joseph Garcia, director of Chicanos Por La Causa Action Fund, a non-profit based in Phoenix. “And whoever wins Arizona is likely to win the White House.” More

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      in US Politics

      The Black electorate could decide the 2020 election. Here's why

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      Black Americans could decide the 2020 presidential election, particularly in key battleground states like Wisconsin and Florida. The battle for the White House approaches as Black Americans face the brunt of an unprecedented national crisis – one in 1,000 have died of the virus and African Americans are twice as likely to have lost a job.
      Joe Biden’s road to the White House could hang on Democrats’ ability to turn out their most loyal bloc.
      Although they have maintained a sizable advantage among African Americans over Republicans counterparts for decades, support for Democrats has slowly declined since the final years of Barack Obama’s presidency. That complicates Democratic efforts to court these 30 million eligible voters ahead of 3 November.

      African Americans are often depicted as a single, unified bloc, and many analysts warn Democrats that therein lies the problem. As experts debunk the myth of the Black voter monolith, the path to victory may be dependent on Democrats’ ability to speak to Black voters’ diversity.
      Here are factors that will shape Black voting turnout on election day, and their political power well beyond.
      Migration puts more states in play
      Since the 1970s, the US has experienced a reverse migration in which Black Americans move from northern cities back to the south. Most often, it’s to communities where they were born or where their families were rooted before the Great Migration – an era between 1916 and 1970 when 6 million African Americans escaped segregation and discrimination in the south, to pursue jobs up north.
      That makes states like Texas, South Carolina and Georgia more competitive.
      “There’s a clear understanding that a growing, energized bloc of African American voters can be a tipping point for any electorate,” Bill Frey, a senior fellow and demographer with the Brookings Institution, told the Guardian.
      “It’s an example of what we can see moving forward where many thought, and still think, that Georgia will eventually turn blue,” he added.
      Along with Georgia, the top states for Black population gains include Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia – all swing or battleground states where the vice-president ramped up campaign efforts in the weeks leading up to 3 November. According to Pew, more than one-third of Black voters live in nine of the most competitive states.
      The Brookings Institution also noted that while progressive attitudes are most often held by younger, college-educated blacks, the influence of retirees and older Americans from more liberal cities can also skew voting blocs left.
      But that’s also creating a generational divide between more radical youth and their pragmatic elders. More

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      in US Politics

      'Abraham Lincoln over here': Trump and Biden clash on racism at presidential debate – video

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      Donald Trump has defended his handling of race issues in the US, declaring three times during the final presidential debate he is ‘the least racist person in this room’. Trump was questioned on his handling of incidents such as describing the Black Lives Matter movement as a symbol of hate and saying protesting Black athletes should be fired. Presidential rival Joe Biden called Trump ‘one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history. He pours fuel on every racist fire’, before adding ‘this guy has a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn’
      Biden mauls Trump’s record on coronavirus in final presidential debate
      Civil rights and QAnon candidates: the fight for facts in Georgia – video More

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      in US Politics

      It's not enough for Black Lives Matter to protest. We must run for office too | Chi Ossé

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      Black Lives Matter, the second civil rights movement, was born seven years ago in the wake of the killings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. It has now come of age. After numerous waves of protest, the 2020 surge marked the largest protest movement in the history of the country. In June, I co-founded Warriors in the Garden, one of New York’s leading protest collectives, and spent nearly every day for months in the streets. This mass mobilization sprang to life following the killings of two more Black Americans, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, at the hands of the police. But the catalyst was not the fuel. Slavery came to our shores in 1619, and has for 400 years defined both the Black experience and the United States. The nation is a powder keg; 2020 lit the fuse.The ensuing explosion has been bright and chaotic, like the final burst of fireworks on the Fourth of July. But powerful explosions, when coalesced, organized and pointed in the same direction, go by another name: a rocket. The protests are not the end but the engine. We are asked where we go from here. We answer that the sky is not the limit, but the direction.There exists a call in the movement to dismantle and deconstruct. Not just racism, but our strongest institutions as well. If for hundreds of years these institutions have served the powerful in quests of oppression, it is argued, then they must be replaced. I choose a more strategic approach, rooted in pride and optimism.The protests are working. Societal opinions of Black Lives Matter have flipped to majority-positive for the first time. As this is still a democracy, we must convert our popularity into political power.Black people built this country. For 400 years, our contributions to its foundations and fabric have been invaluable. Our free labor provided its original riches; our culture brightened its soul; our hard-earned successes gave it a fighting chance to look in the mirror and feel a sense of honest pride.Black people built this country. For 400 years, our contributions to its foundations and fabric have been invaluableWhile the language of the American promise is bold, optimistic, and worth fighting for, our history is more complicated. Our story is one of struggle and perseverance, by progressives against reactionaries, to make true Martin Luther King Jr’s belief that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Changing technology and demographics, combined with society’s long-sought agreement to confront its past, offer this era a glimpse of an end to this fight. At once, the horizon becomes within reach.Over seven years, the Black Lives Matter movement has touched individuals and cities from coast to coast to reshape society. It has illuminated to millions of Americans the suffering of millions of others happening just under their noses. It sparked a re-evaluation of our history and heroes. It shone a spotlight on a swath of artists and leaders who had labored unrecognized for too long.Through this movement, many people – of good intentions but often under-informed – were made aware of their complacency and complicity in grave injustices, and committed to alleviating them. Black Lives Matter has awakened America.There is a belief in this country that a “silent majority” of Americans are conservatives, opposed to progress and loyal to a mythical past. While in Richard Nixon’s era this may have been true, it is no longer. There is no silent majority opposed to progressive change. The majority is with us and it is loud.The next step is to convert these voices to votes. It is from the platform of this philosophy that I launched my own bid to serve as a Gen Z member of the New York city council, and call on a young, multiracial coalition of progressives across the country to step forward as well. Monumental change will come with this coalition at the helm of America’s institutions, including its businesses, schools and the government itself. No longer must we rely primarily on making requests and demands of those in power, nor should we insist the seats of power be dismantled. We will claim those seats.We have invested far too much in this country, both willingly and unwillingly, to not finish the job. We built this ship. It is our right to sail it, and our duty to point it in the right direction.Then our democratic dream can be realized.The political ideology espoused in the streets this summer is not new. But our clear path to enact it might be. With popular support behind us, we stand at the threshold of political revolution. The key lies in merging the utility of democratic government with the tidal force of mass mobilization. If government is the machine, the movement must be its fuel.As Black Americans and our coalition fulfill our role as what Nikole Hannah-Jones calls in the 1619 Project “the perfecters of this democracy”, this second civil rights movement will be the last. The partnership between government and movement is the remedy to heal our historical scars and open wounds, and carry this democracy toward perfection. More

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      in US Politics

      What Ice Cube's collaboration with Trump – and critique of Democrats – reveals | Malaika Jabali

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      Throughout this election season, the rapper Ice Cube has assumed a self-bestowed mantle as spokesperson for Black politics. He has urged that Black Americans make demands before guaranteeing anyone their vote. “Be skeptical of anybody telling you to just vote … and not get anything for your vote,” he said on Instagram in September. “You vote because your community is getting something.”Last week, Donald Trump’s senior adviser Katrina Pierson announced that Ice Cube worked with the Trump campaign to develop their “Platinum Plan” for Black America, unleashing a furious wave of public criticism and accusations. At the core of the backlash is the suspicion that Cube’s commentary and his chief political initiative, the Contract with Black America, is less about promoting a Black agenda and more about suppressing Black voter turnout for the Democratic party, which Black Americans overwhelmingly support.The accusation compelled Ice Cube to appear on a number of media outlets to clarify his position. “I’m willing to work with both teams, but I’m just working with whoever is willing to work with me,” Ice Cube said on CNN. In an interview with journalist Roland Martin, Cube said “for us not to engage with both sides of the aisle to fix what I think is an American problem … is not going to help us in the end.”’Small government’ won’t fix the mess that neoliberal public policies have created for Black peopleThis controversy reveals several things about American politics, and specifically the sad state of political affairs for Black people. For starters, the political environment is so fraught – and voters are so antsy about another four years of a Trump presidency – that any appearance of impropriety will raise alarm bells for many Black Americans. But that instinct has the effect of silencing even mild criticism of Joe Biden or the Democratic party. We’re closer and closer to the election, and two-party tribalism is in overdrive, nuance is mostly absent, and commentators are falling into their expected camps. Conservatives gleefully use Cube’s message to prop up Trump. Liberals largely dismiss Ice Cube as a race traitor without sitting with his concerns. And Ice Cube defenders reflect little on Cube’s botched political strategy or the market-based, libertarian-esque philosophy he’s proposing for problems that require radical solutions and wholesale government intervention.The fact of the matter is, Black Americans defending and criticizing Ice Cube both have valid concerns. Neither major political party is working for Black Americans economically. The Black-white wealth gap is alarming, with white households holding 11.5 times more wealth than Black ones, and the gap continues to widen. Black homeownership is at a record low. More Black people are being imprisoned than in the 1960s. And both parties have contributed to these policy failures while letting big business off the hook for practices that exploit and harm our communities. This includes encouraging manufacturing jobs to leave for cheaper, deunionized labor in sectors that were disproportionately occupied by Black men; failing to adequately regulate big banks who profited from subprime mortgages targeted to Black communities; failing to assist Black Americans when the economy crashed on their backs; and enabling corporations to make astronomical profits off the disproportionately Black and Latino workers working in essential jobs during Covid.As long as we’re stuck in a two-party system backed by big corporations, big money donors and financial institutions, Black people will never find a reprieve. We’ll simply jump from one party to the next, or out of the ballot booths altogether. We’ll frame our political power solely on the terms of what party leaders promise and consistently fail to provide. We’ll seek whatever meager concessions we can muster – taskforces, committee leadership promotions, and an assortment of patronage jobs – that ultimately leave many Black people disappointed and disillusioned.It’s the disappointment I saw in multiple Ice Cube interviews. It’s the resignation I’ve heard from working-class Black Americans all over the country in my reporting. Thus, given the acute economic crisis for Black Americans, it behooves anyone speaking on their behalf to have their shit together, to put it bluntly. We cannot afford anything less. Anyone with basic political instincts should know that any association with a white nationalist-sympathizing president could and should significantly turn off Black voters. Cube’s strategy has heaved sound policy ideas into a tribalist, corporate media meat grinder, rendering the original message unrecognizable. It reduces the 22 pages of (mostly) impressive and sweeping policy prescriptions in Cube’s Contract with Black America – proposals such as baby bonds, a jobs guarantee, and freeing people imprisoned for marijuana possession – to a two-page “platinum” talking point for Trump’s lackeys.If Ice Cube wants to reduce the Black agenda to a mere election-season transaction – without considering the more fundamental relation between Black liberation and anticapitalism – he should at least get his basic business sense right. There are some parties you just don’t negotiate with, because the starting terms are too far apart. Donald Trump comes from a party that promotes small government and normalizes white supremacy. A transformative economic agenda requires large, government investments in low-income and working-class communities. This runs counter to the entire Republican trickle-down economic platform of the past several decades. The present Republican administration has yet to provide basic economic programs en masse in an election year for millions of Americans suffering from the financial fallout of Covid-19, many of whom are Trump supporters themselves. It is beyond fantastical to believe Trump, or any Republican president, will advance programs to Black Americans that he doesn’t provide his own followers.But most of Ice Cube’s liberal critics fail to acknowledge that the Democratic party has fared little better. Though his strategy and conclusions are miscalculated, his description of the problems are not. The Republican party has moved right and dragged Democrats with them; the result is that Democrats have spent much of the past several decades working overtime to outflank Republicans on tough-on-crime policies, austerity politics, deregulation and privatization, and it’s that school of thought of which Biden has been a longtime instructor.“Small government” won’t fix the mess which exploitative business practices and neoliberal public policies have created for Black people. What it will likely take are independent voters, a mass movement and progressive organized labor – which cannot be corralled a few months before an election – to make demands for radical, systemic change. This is serious work that, at the least, requires consistent commitment and being in community with organizers and policy experts who have been thinking and working towards those demands for more than a season. Anything less will fail the very communities people like Ice Cube claim to represent.Watergate reporter Bob Woodward will discuss the Trump presidency at a Guardian Live online event on Tuesday 27 October, 7pm GMT. Book tickets here More

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      in Elections

      Twitter suspends accounts for posing as Black Trump supporters

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      Twitter has suspended a network of accounts claiming to be owned by Black supporters of Donald Trump and his re-election campaign due to spam and platform manipulation, it said Tuesday.The company is investigating the activity and may suspend additional similar accounts if they are found to be violating its policies, a spokesperson said.The Washington Post first reported on the investigation, citing more than a dozen accounts using identical, inauthentic language including the phrase: “YES IM BLACK AND IM VOTING FOR TRUMP!!!”A review of some of the suspended accounts shows they often used stolen images to appear real. The accounts sometimes claimed to be owned by military veterans or members of law enforcement.This is not the first time Twitter has had to address a spam operation claiming to be led by Black voters. NBC News also reported spam operations from fake accounts posing as Black Trump supporters in August.Some accounts were able to attract thousands of followers before they were suspended. One tweet, for example, amassed more than 10,000 retweets before it was removed, NBC News found. Another account allegedly used a photo of a veteran who died last month to pose as a Trump supporter.Polls show about 10% of Black voters in the US support Trump. These accounts raised suspicion for their identical language and stock image avatars.Meanwhile, research shows Black Americans have been negatively impacted by misinformation campaigns online in recent months, particularly those focused on spreading misinformation about Covid-19.“Black lives are consistently put in danger, and it is incumbent upon community actors, media, government, and tech companies alike to do their part to ensure that timely, local, relevant and redundant public health messages are served to all communities,” a study from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center found.Twitter rules prohibit using the platform “in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter”, a Twitter spokesman told the Guardian.The company reports campaigns discovered to be state-backed in its public archive. This month it revealed it had suspended more than 1,500 accounts affiliated with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Thailand and Russia that had sought to spread misinformation. It did not say where it believed the network of people posing as Black Trump supporters originated or whether it was state-backed.Reuters contributed reporting More