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 USA.
Trump, the forty fifth US president, defeated Caribbean-American US Vice President, Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaica-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 expenses of authoritarianism in securing the requisite swing states — together with Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — in successful 277 Electoral School votes to reclaim the US presidency. Harris obtained 224 Electoral School votes.
“It’s very disappointing,” Guyanese-born New York State Senator, Roxanne Persaud, informed the Caribbean Media Company (CMC), including “the underside line is America just isn’t prepared for a girl president.
“She’s (Kamala Harris) the very best certified. It’s misogyny; it’s a disgrace,” added Persaud, who represents the nineteenth Senate District in Brooklyn, New York, about Harris’ defeat in Tuesday’s US Presidential Elections.
“Now we have work to do. We’ll by no means hand over. By way of ethical compass, I don’t suppose they (Trump and his Republican surrogates) have any. When somebody can speak about such evil, and to reward him, it’s unhappy.
“A lady has to leap by all of the hoops and nonetheless don’t get elected. His (Trump) surrogates are talking what he desires them to talk. He mentioned he’s going to ship immigrants house; it’s the immigrants who’re baby-sitting their youngsters, and so on,” Persaud added.
The Jamaica-born neighborhood activist, Delroy Wright, mentioned he was in disbelief concerning the election consequence.
“I can’t imagine it. 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 akin to ‘immigrants are poisoning the blood of America; they’re taking Black jobs; Kamala just isn’t Black’.
“I can’t perceive how America can fall for that,” Wright informed CMC.
“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,” he mentioned, including “within the conventional America that we all know, bread and butter points had been the principle motive why a president is elected or received re-elected.
“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 problem he confronted as president. He encountered no different main problem, and he mismanaged it to create nice hurt to this nation – an amazing lack of life – and tanked the economic system within the midst of it.
“Come January 20, 2025 (Inauguration Day), he’ll once more inherit a very good economic system, based mostly on all the usual measurements, and I predict he’s going to ‘tank’ that additionally,” Wright mentioned.
Brooklyn-based lawyer, Benjamin Pinczewski, who’s very energetic within the Caribbean-American neighborhood and helps a number of Caribbean elected officers, mentioned he was “very pissed off, disenchanted, disgusted and downhearted” with Trump’s victory.
“I’m very disenchanted, however I’m not stunned. I believe White America was enraged over the truth that Obama was elected president, they usually by no means received over it,” he mentioned, blaming President Joe Biden for the loss.
“He was clearly considerably impaired however refused to step apart till it was too late, unfair to Kamala and to America,” Pinczewski mentioned, including “by no means underestimate the hatred so lots of our fellow People have for individuals they understand as ‘completely different’”.
Grenadian-born adjunct faculty professor, Martin Felix, warned that it’ll be an extended, chilly winter, a metaphor for the 4 years approaching.
“I believe the polls had been displaying a more in-depth race than what truly transpired,” mentioned Felix, an government member of the Brooklyn-based group, Caribbean-People United in Assist of Kamala Harris for President.
“I imagine that was as a result of individuals 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 received the higher of them.
“I imagine our worst fears got here by. Many individuals had been impacted by racism and misogyny, they usually allowed base instincts to get higher of their motive,” Felix mentioned, noting that whereas working in polling stations in Brooklyn on Tuesday, “lots of people had been fearful a couple of Trump administration.
“The hazard is actual as a result of he (and the Republicans) has the (US) Home, the Senate and the Presidency. The factor for us to do proper now could be to re-organise, regroup, replicate, create.
“There’ll be loads of assault on Black establishments. We are going to want an outlet. So, we now have to create these areas, strengthening our cultural retailers. We’re going to undergo some troublesome instances, however we now have to search out time to organise and resist.”
The St Vincent and the Grenadines-born neighborhood employee in Brooklyn, Sherrill-Ann Mason-Haywood, mentioned “we had been on the best facet of historical past, however America has spoken loudly. As unhappy a day that this can be for us, we now have actual choices to make.
“America has despatched a loud message about what it desires 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 individuals to carry its experiment to life. It’s nonetheless within the enterprise of annihilating and enslaving individuals.
“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.
“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 organising can’t cease and wait for an additional 4 years,” Mason-Haywood mentioned.
“Now we have actual decisions to make. We both keep and construct, or we depart the American experiment. Weeping might endure for an evening, however pleasure cometh within the morning.”
In his victory speech in West Palm Seashore, Florida, Trump mentioned that he was the chief of “the best political motion of all time.
“We overcame obstacles that no person thought potential,” he mentioned, stating that he would assume the presidency with an “unprecedented and highly effective mandate.”
However Murad Awawdeh, president and chief government officer of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), an umbrella coverage and advocacy organisation that represents over 200 immigrant and refugee rights teams all through New York, mentioned 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 informed CMC.
“Donald Trump has demonised 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 are going to cease him once more.
“Collectively, we are going to battle the fascist President-elect and his racist deportation agenda each step of the way in which – to make sure that our immigrant neighbours, households and communities will dwell in security and with dignity.
“We should stand collectively to guard our immigrant neighbours, and to construct a simply and inclusive future for all New Yorkers,” Awawdeh informed CMC.
