My article in today's Irish Independent 👇
Donald Trump conceding defeat is like Hannibal Lecter agreeing to be
sectioned. He will not go peacefully. It seems fitting that the final scene of
the Trump horror show was set in a seedy parking lot where a press conference
was held between a crematorium and a sex shop called “Fantasy Island” (I’m not
kidding). It would be comedic if it wasn’t so tragic.
Trump’s four year tyrannical reign inflicted wounds that will linger
long after the stench of his rhetoric has dissipated into the choke
damp ether. His list of ignominies is longer than an Al Capone charge sheet but
the fact that 240,000 coronavirus deaths and the separation (and caging) of 666
migrant children from their families did not result in a landslide victory for Joe
Biden, should ring alarm bells for the Democrats.
During the agonising count, I tuned into RTE’s Drivetime which appeared
to have been temporarily hijacked by Fox News to promulgate far right, white
supremacist conspiracy theories on an unsuspecting Irish audience. Platforming
Steve Bannon was not RTE’s finest hour. This is a man charged with fraud and whose podcast
was removed from YouTube and permanently banned by twitter after he appeared to call for
the beheading of Dr Anthony Fauci. His sycophantic
RTE interview is still available online but it really shouldn’t be.
Fast forward, a few more days of waiting and counting before Joe Biden
emerges triumphant. Relief was my over-riding feeling. He won, but by the skin
of his teeth and he couldn’t have done it without the army of women of colour
that lent him their backing when progressive candidate, Bernie Sanders, exited
the Democratic presidential race.
Kamala Harris, who made history as not just the first female, but the
first black female, Vice-President elect, acknowledged these women in her
victory speech. She praised the “black women who are too often overlooked but
who have proved to be the backbone of our democracy”. Women like Stacey Abrams, who was instrumental
in making Biden the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia in 28 years. Abrams
mobilised a coalition of grassroots organisers in predominately minority
communities, registering 800,000 new voters in Georgia alone. Fair Fight, the organisation Abrams created to combat voter
suppression also helped Biden win in Wisconsin and other key swing states.
Black women like Cori Bush, a nurse and single
mother whose own experience of homelessness spurred her to mobilise her
community to feed and shelter those abandoned by the state. Her people-powered
campaign resulted in Bush becoming Missouri’s first black congresswoman.
And there’s the self-styled “Squad” of four
congresswomen of colour: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of
Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Shunned
by the Democratic Party machine, they all secured their second terms
campaigning on Medicare for all, a Green New Deal and racial justice. They were
chosen by communities to represent their
interests, not those of corporate sponsors. Their tireless advocacy was
rewarded at the ballot box.
How did the President
of the United States, Donald Trump, greet these inspirational young
congresswomen of colour (two of whom are Muslim) to the house when first
elected in 2018? By tweeting they should, “go back
and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested
places from which they came”, despite all but one
being born in the US. Omar, a Somalian refugee, has been a US citizen for two
decades.
Ocasio-Cortez, who has 10 million
twitter followers, used her social media savvy to mobilise and energise the grassroots activism that produced large turnouts in
Detroit, Philadelphia and Georgia for Biden’s win. She acknowledged the uphill
battle to convince non-voters in disaffected communities to register and then
vote having felt betrayed by previous Democratic administrations.
Many had not forgotten nor forgiven Barack Obama who,
in return for gifting him their votes, bailed out banks that then repossessed
their homes. At the end of his presidency, unemployment figures for Black
Americans remained double that
of their white counterparts (8 per cent) and it was during the Obama-era that
the Black Lives Matter movement was born in protest against the killing of
black people by police officers.
By 2016, Obama, with the help of Hilary Clinton, had crushed
the most crucial weapon in the Democratic electoral armoury: Hope. Paving the
way for Trump’s politics of hate to fill the void.
The US far right are not going anywhere. If Biden fails to
harness the hope that an army of working class women of colour awoke to secure
his victory, another, more malignant, polished incarnation of Trump will be
waiting in the wings, ready to detonate a dirty bomb of bigotry. It will make the
last four years seem like a sepia tinted Shirley Temple movie.
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