Caribbean American community disappointed in Trump win

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Supporters of US Vice-President Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris gather ahead of her speech at Howard University in Washington, DC, on November 6, 2024. Donald Trump won a sweeping victory on November 6, 2024 in the US presidential election, defeating Harris to complete an astonishing political comeback that sent shock waves around the world. (Photos: AFP)

NEW YORK, United States (CMC) — The Caribbean American community in New York early Wednesday expressed profound disappointment and frustration over the election of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States.

Trump, the 45th US president, defeated Caribbean American US Vice-President Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican-born retired economist Dr Donald Harris, in the hotly contested race.

The former president, among other things, survived criminal convictions, indictments, assassination attempt and charges of authoritarianism in securing the requisite swing states — including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — in winning 277 electoral college votes to reclaim the US presidency. Harris received 224 electoral college votes.

“It’s very disappointing,” Guyanese-born New York State Senator Roxanne Persaud told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) , adding “the bottom line is America is not ready for a woman president.

“She’s [Kamala Harris] the best qualified. It’s misogyny; it’s a shame,” added Persaud, who represents the 19th Senate District in Brooklyn, New York, about Harris’s defeat in Tuesday’s US presidential elections.

“We have work to do. We’ll never give up. In terms of moral compass, I don’t think they [Trump and his Republican surrogates] have any. When someone can talk about such evil, and to reward him, it’s sad.

“A woman has to jump through all the hoops and still don’t get elected. His [Trump] surrogates are speaking what he wants them to speak. He said he’s going to send immigrants home; it’s the immigrants who are babysitting their children, etc,” Persaud added.

Jamaican-born community activist Delroy Wright said he was in disbelief about the elections’ result.

“I can’t believe it. America has voted for a man who only uses sound bites and has no comprehensive plan on how he’s going to lead this country. He uses sound bites such as’ immigrants are poisoning the blood of America; they’re taking black jobs; Kamala is not black’.

“I can’t understand how America can fall for that,” Wright told CMC.

“The economy is clearly good. Kamala has put forward a clear plan of what she would do for America and even put forward how we would pay for them,” he said, adding “in the traditional America that we know, bread and butter issues were the main reason why a president is elected or got re-elected.

“Trump has had one prior chance, elected, where he inherited a good economy from Obama [former US President Barack Obama], and he ‘tanked’ it, and he mismanaged COVID-19 pandemic – the only major issue he faced as president. He encountered no other major issue, and he mismanaged it to create great harm to this country – a tremendous loss of life – and tanked the economy in the midst of it.

“Come January 20, 2025 [Inauguration Day], he will again inherit a good economy, based on all the standard measurements, and I predict he’s going to ‘tank’ that also,” Wright said.

Brooklyn-based lawyer, Benjamin Pinczewski, a who’s very active in the Caribbean-American community and supports several Caribbean elected officials, said he was “very frustrated, disappointed, disgusted and downhearted” with Trump’s victory.

“I’m very disappointed, but I’m not surprised. I think White America was enraged over the fact that Obama was elected president, and they never got over it,” he said, blaming President Joe Biden for the loss.

“He was clearly significantly impaired but refused to step aside until it was too late, unfair to Kamala and to America,” Pinczewski said, adding “never underestimate the hatred so many of our fellow Americans have for people they perceive as ‘different’.”

Grenadian-born adjunct college professor, Martin Felix, warned that it is going to be a long, cold winter, a metaphor for the four years approaching.

“I think the polls were showing a closer race that what actually transpired,” said Felix, an executive member of the Brooklyn-based group Caribbean-Americans United in Support of Kamala Harris for President.

“I believe that was because people had cognitive dissonance [mentally conflicted]. They may have been too embarrassed to say openly they are voting Trump. But, ultimately, their racism, sexism and anti-immigrant sentiments got the better of them.

“I believe our worst fears came through. Many people were impacted by racism and misogyny, and they allowed base instincts to get better of their reason,” Felix said, noting that while working in polling stations in Brooklyn on Tuesday, “a lot of people were fearful about a Trump Administration.

“The danger is real because he [and the Republicans] has the [US] House, the Senate and the presidency. The thing for us to do right now is to reorganise, regroup, reflect, create.

“There’ll be a lot of attack on black institutions. We will need an outlet. So, we have to create those spaces, strengthening our cultural outlets. We’re going to go through some difficult times, but we have to find time to organise and resist.”

St Vincent and the Grenadines-born community worker in Brooklyn, Sherrill-Ann Mason-Haywood, said “we were on the right side of history, but America has spoken loudly. As sad a day that this may be for us, we have real decisions to make.

“America has sent a loud message about what it wants to preserve: its original principles. Let us never forget the ‘experiment that America was set up to be, and that it annihilated the native peoples and brought enslaved people to bring its experiment to life. It is still in the business of annihilating and enslaving people.

“We need to either remain docile and accept the result, and deal with whatever the consequences, or start educating ourselves, unifying and consolidating our real power to build a different, more inclusive nation.

“But first, we must stop the blaming of each other; that has been one of the master’s tools to keep us divided. We have to heal and move on resolutely in our communities. Our organising cannot stop and wait for another four years,” Mason-Haywood said.

“We have real choices to make. We either stay and build, or we leave the American experiment. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

In his victory speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump said that he was the leader of “the greatest political movement of all time.

“We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible,” he said, stating that he would assume the presidency with an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”

But Murad Awawdeh, president and chief executive officer of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), an umbrella policy and advocacy organisation that represents over 200 immigrant and refugee rights groups throughout New York, said that “Trump will not defeat us.

“New York will not be the same without the immigrants who have built and rebuilt our culture and economy for generations,” he told CMC.

“Donald Trump has demonised our communities at every turn of this election, and has promised to tear apart the families that have contributed so much more to our great state than he has. We stopped him before and we will stop him again.

“Together, we will fight the fascist president-elect and his racist deportation agenda every step of the way – to ensure that our immigrant neighbours, families and communities will live in safety and with dignity.

“We must stand together to protect our immigrant neighbours, and to build a just and inclusive future for all New Yorkers,” Awawdeh told CMC .

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