The Caribbean-American neighborhood in New York early Wednesday expressed profound disappointment and frustration over the election of Donald Trump because the forty seventh president of the US.
Trump, the 45th US president, Tuesday night time defeated Caribbean-American US Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican-born retired economist Dr. Donald Harris, within the hotly-contested race.
The previous president, amongst different issues, survived a legal conviction, indictments, assassination try and fees of authoritarianism in securing the requisite swing states — together with Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — in profitable 277 Electoral Faculty votes to reclaim the US presidency. Harris obtained 224 Electoral Faculty votes.
“It’s very disappointing,” Guyanese-born New York State Sen. Roxanne Persaud advised the Caribbean Life. “The underside line is America will not be prepared for a girl president. She’s (Kamala Harris) the perfect certified.
“It’s misogyny; it’s a disgrace,” added Persaud, who represents the 19th Senate District in Brooklyn, about Harris’s defeat in Tuesday’s US Presidential Elections. “Now we have work to do. We’ll by no means quit.
“By way of ethical compass, I don’t assume they (Trump and his Republican surrogates) have any,” she continued. “When somebody can speak about such evil, and to reward him, it’s unhappy.
“A girl has to leap via all of the hoops and nonetheless don’t get elected,” Persaud stated. “His (Trump) surrogates are talking what he needs them to talk. He stated he’s going to ship immigrants dwelling; it’s the immigrants who’re baby-sitting their youngsters, and so on.”
Delroy Wright, a Jamaican-born neighborhood activist in Flatbush, Brooklyn stated he was in disbelief concerning the elections’ consequence.
“I can’t consider it,” he advised Caribbean Life. “America has voted for a person who solely makes use of solely sound bites and has no complete plan on how he’s going to steer this nation. He makes use of sound bites reminiscent of’ immigrants are poisoning the blood of America; they’re taking Black jobs; Kamala will not be Black’.
“I can’t perceive how America can fall for that,” Wright added. “The economic system is clearly good. Kamala has put ahead a transparent plan of what she would do for America and even put ahead how we might pay for them.
“Within the conventional America that we all know, bread and butter points had been the primary purpose why a president is elected or obtained re-elected,” Wright continued. “Trump has had one prior likelihood, elected, the place he inherited a very good economic system from Obama (former US President Barack Obama), and he ‘tanked’ it, and he mismanaged COVID-19 pandemic – the one main subject he confronted as president. He encountered no different main subject, and he mismanaged it to create nice hurt to this nation – an incredible lack of life – and tanked the economic system within the midst of it.
“Come Jan. 20, 2025 (Inauguration Day), he’ll once more inherit a very good economic system, primarily based on all the usual measurements, and I predict he’s going to ‘tank’ that additionally,” he stated.
Benjamin Pinczewski, a Brooklyn-based lawyer who’s very lively within the Caribbean-American neighborhood and helps a number of Caribbean elected officers, stated he was “very pissed off, disenchanted, disgusted and downhearted” with Trump’s victory.
“I’m very disenchanted, however I’m not stunned,” he stated. “I believe White America was enraged over the truth that Obama was elected president, they usually by no means obtained over it.
“I blame Joe Biden (present US President) and the truth that he was clearly considerably impaired however refused to step apart till it was too late (to make methods for Harris) – unfair to Kamala and to America,” Pinczewski added. “By no means underestimate the hatred so lots of our fellow People have for folks they understand as ‘totally different’”.
Martin Felix, a Grenadian-born adjunct faculty professor in New York and public faculty instructor in Brooklyn, warned that: “It’s going to be a protracted, chilly winter – a metaphor for the 4 years approaching.
“I believe the polls had been exhibiting a more in-depth race that what really transpired,” stated Felix, an govt member of the Brooklyn-based group, Caribbean-People United in Assist of Kamala Harris for President. “I consider that was as a result of folks had cognitive dissonance (mentally conflicted). They could have been too embarrassed to say brazenly they’re voting Trump. However, finally, their racism, sexism and anti-immigrant sentiments obtained the higher of them.
“I consider our worst fears got here via,” he added. “Many individuals had been impacted by racism and misogyny, they usually allowed base instincts to get higher of their purpose.”
Felix stated that whereas working in polling stations in Brooklyn on Tuesday, “lots of people had been fearful a few Trump administration.
“The hazard is actual as a result of he (Republicans) has the (US) Home, the Senate and the Presidency,” he stated. “The factor for us to do proper now’s to re-organize, regroup, replicate, create.
“There’ll be plenty of assault on Black establishments,” Felix warned. “We are going to want an outlet. So, we have now to create these areas, strengthening our cultural retailers. We’re going to undergo some troublesome instances, however we have now to seek out time to arrange and resist.”
Sherrill-Ann Mason-Haywood, a Vincentian-born neighborhood employee in Brooklyn, stated: “We had been on the appropriate aspect of historical past, however America has spoken loudly.
“As unhappy a day that this can be for us, we have now actual selections to make,” she stated. “America has despatched a loud message about what it needs to protect: its unique ideas. Allow us to always remember the ‘experiment that America was set as much as be, and that it annihilated the native peoples and introduced enslaved folks to convey its experiment to life. It’s nonetheless within the enterprise of annihilating and enslaving folks.
“We have to both stay docile and settle for the consequence, and cope with regardless of the penalties, or begin educating ourselves, unifying and consolidating our actual energy to construct a unique, extra inclusive nation,” she added. “However first, we should cease the blaming of one another; that has been one of many grasp’s instruments to maintain us divided. Now we have to heal and transfer on resolutely in our communities.
“Our organizing can’t cease and wait for one more 4 years,” Mason-Haywood continued. “Now we have actual selections to make. We both keep and construct, or we depart the American experiment. Weeping could endure for an evening, however pleasure cometh within the morning.”
In his victory speech in West Palm Seaside, Florida, Trump stated that he was the chief of “the best political motion of all time.
“We overcame obstacles that no one thought attainable,” he stated, stating that he would assume the presidency with an “unprecedented and highly effective mandate.”
However Murad Awawdeh – president and chief govt officer of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), an umbrella coverage and advocacy group that represents over 200 immigrant and refugee rights teams all through New York – stated that “Trump is not going to defeat us.
“New York wouldn’t be the identical with out the immigrants who’ve constructed and rebuilt our tradition and economic system for generations,” he advised Caribbean Life. “Donald Trump has demonized our communities at each flip of this election, and has promised to tear aside the households which have contributed a lot extra to our nice state than he has. We stopped him earlier than and we’ll cease him once more.
“Collectively, we’ll battle the fascist President-elect and his racist deportation agenda each step of the way in which – to make sure that our immigrant neighbors, households and communities will dwell in security and with dignity,” Awawdeh added. “We should stand collectively to guard our immigrant neighbors, and to construct a simply and inclusive future for all New Yorkers.”
