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Why the cost of water for poor Black Detroit voters may be key to Kamala Harris winning – or losing – Michigan
Sep 27, 2024
Ronald Brown is a professor of political science at Wayne State University. R. Khari Brown is a professor of sociology at Wayne State University.
The threat of violence was in the air at the TCF Center in Detroit on Nov. 5, 2020, after former President Donald Trump claimed that poll workers in the city were duplicating ballots and that there was an unexplained delay in delivering them for counting.
Both claims were later debunked.
Emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric, dozens of mainly white Republican Trump supporters banged on doors and windows at the vote-tallying center, chanting, “Stop the count!”
But Detroit’s poll workers, most of them Black, finished tallying the ballots. In the end, 95% of voters in Detroit, the largest city in Michigan and the one with the most African Americans – 78% of residents – cast their ballot for Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee.
We are political science and sociology professors at Wayne State University in Detroit, where we teach about the relationship between race, religion and politics. Our research has identified two groups of African American voters in Detroit – one that will clearly support Kamala Harris and another that is critical for her to win over if she wants to win Michigan.
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Firmly in Kamala’s camp
Those African Americans most likely to vote for Harris in November 2024 are strong Democratic partisans who feel that Trump threatens Black political strides toward democracy.
Harris can also rely on members of Detroit nonprofits like the NAACP, Black Greek organizations, and religious congregations connected to advocacy groups such as MOSES, the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and the Fannie Lou Hamer Political Action Committee.
But what of the working-class and poor Black Detroit residents who tend not to be as heavily connected to the Democratic Party and are less involved with grassroots organizations that advocate on their behalf? These are the individuals who inconsistently vote in presidential elections but that recent history has shown could be key to winning Michigan, a crucial swing state.
Small bumps in voter turnout matter
While Detroit’s voters helped Biden win the state and the White House in 2020, such was not the case for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The difference was due in part to lower voter turnout.
In 2016, 95% of the Detroiters who voted in the presidential election opted for Democratic nominee Clinton. Still, she lost Michigan by 0.2% – fewer than 11,000 votes.
One contributing factor to the difference in Michigan’s presidential election outcomes between 2016 and 2020 was Detroit’s lower voter turnout in 2016 relative to 2020.
In 2016, Detroit’s voter turnout was 48.6% – compared with 50.88% in 2020. Detroit’s higher voter turnout in 2020 contributed to Biden winning Michigan in 2020 by a margin of less than 3%.
Let us suppose that 2016 and 2020 are guides to 2024. In that case, Harris’ ability to win Michigan in November is less about losing Black voters to Trump than her ability to motivate Black voters in Detroit and across the state to show up to the polls. This is key because African Americans, at roughly 13% of the U.S. electorate, overwhelmingly vote Democratic when they vote.
In many respects, 2020 served as a referendum on Trump’s management of the COVID-19 epidemic, which had an outsize impact on Black Americans, who were nearly twice as likely as white Americans to die from the virus.
That election also served as a referendum on Trump’s racial politics. During the summer of 2020, with the nation embroiled in protests against anti-Black police violence, Trump framed the protesters as anti-American and criminals.
It therefore makes sense that in 2020, the vast majority – over 90% – of African Americans nationwide stated that concerns about racism and COVID-19 motivated their vote.
Looking toward the 2024 election, a question that looms large is: Will the Black voter turnout in Detroit be closer to 2016 or 2020?
Quality-of-life issues key in 2024
In early 2024, quality-of-life concerns about crime, vacant buildings and affordable housing were the top three issues that Detroit residents want their city and the U.S. government to address, according to the Detroit Metro Area Communities Study.
Similarly, an August 2024 poll by Suffolk University and USA Today found that roughly 6 in 10 Black voters in Michigan mentioned the rising cost of living, crime and health care as motivating their willingness to vote.
These same issues are at the top of Black voters’ minds nationwide. A February 2024 Kaiser Family Foundation Poll reported that over 90% of Black Americans believe that the presidential candidates should discuss the rising cost of living and health care, and three-quarters believe they should discuss protecting the Affordable Care Act.
The 2024 election is a crucial moment for these issues to be addressed.
Detroit’s ongoing water concerns
When it comes to working-class and low-income people in Detroit, a key cost-of-living issue is the cost of water.
As Detroit’s city government attempted to shore up its finances following its 2013 bankruptcy, it began to more aggressively target residents who were delinquent in their water bills. The city shut off the water of more than 141,000 residents between 2013 and 2020.
As of 2023, 27% of Detroit households – about 170,000 people – are at risk of having their water shut off due to unpaid water bills. The 60,000 people in arrears for unpaid water bills owe an average of US$700.
In response to this crisis, local grassroots organizations, many of them faith-based, like the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, organized community members to push for legislation that ties water bill rates to residents’ income.
In October 2023, Michigan Democrat State Sen. Stephanie Chang introduced a series of bills to do just that, but the bills have languished in the Housing and Human Services Senate Committee.
An April 2024, a metropolitan Detroit survey we conducted revealed that 87% of Black Detroiters support these water affordability bills.
Harris’ ability to generate Black voter turnout in Michigan that’s similar to 2020, particularly in Detroit, may hinge on her ability to articulate the federal government’s plans to address cost-of-living concerns. This includes securing federal grants for cities, like Detroit, to subsidize water rates for its working-class and low-income residents.
While Harris did not explicitly address the issue of water affordability during her Labor Day visit to Detroit, she did tell the audience that, unlike Trump, she would not impose a national sales tax on everyday items. She also pledged to keep prescription drug prices affordable and strengthen the Affordable Care Act.
Will Harris’ message that Detroiters’ cost of living will fare worse under a Trump administration be enough to energize Black Detroiters to vote for her?
This is a crucial question for her 2024 campaign in Michigan, where she and Trump are in a statistical tie among likely voters.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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A reflection: How Kamala Harris is carrying the torch
Sep 26, 2024
Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" and program director for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.
As the 2024 presidential campaign season heats up, with Vice President Kamala Harris emerging as a formidable contender, it's a moment to reflect on the enduring power of the feminist mantra that has shaped generations of women in politics: "The personal is political."
This potent idea, popularized by trailblazers like Shirley Chisholm and bell hooks, continues to resonate through women's leadership actions today. It's particularly relevant in the context of the 2024 election, as we witness Harris' campaign and the unmistakable impact of her personal experiences on her political vision.
Chisholm's legacy is one of groundbreaking firsts. The first Black woman in Congress and the first woman to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, Chisholm challenged the political status quo. Her unapologetic advocacy for women's rights, people of color and people experiencing poverty embodied the idea that personal experiences and identities shape political action. Chisholm famously said, "If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair." Her boldness and determination continue to inspire women to claim their rightful space in politics, serving as an example of hope and encouragement for generations to come.
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Renowned author and scholar bell hooks spent her career exploring the intersections of race, gender and class. Her work has been instrumental in shaping our understanding of how systems of oppression operate and how individuals can resist. She argues that “personal is political” is not just a slogan but a strategy for liberation. By centering the experiences and perspectives of marginalized people, we can challenge dominant power structures and create a more just society.
The legacy of Chisholm and hooks reminds us that the personal is political — not just a catchphrase, but a call to action. It's a mandate to challenge the systems that have historically excluded women, all of which are connected and of concern to women. It's a commitment to centering all people's experiences and perspectives, especially marginalized communities, in their work and witness.
For Harris, the personal has undoubtedly been political. From her early days as a prosecutor to her time as a senator and now as vice president, Harris has drawn on her experiences as a woman of Black and Southeast Asian descent to inform her policy priorities. Her advocacy for racial justice, women's rights and immigrant communities, as seen in her support for the Voting Rights Advancement Act and her work on the Senate Judiciary Committee, derives from within. It is a deep understanding of how power impacts people's lives — the double binds and biases women, particularly those of color, encounter in leadership. Harris must navigate these, from the “angry Black woman” stereotype to the pressure to conform to traditional gender roles, while staying true to the principles of intersectional womanism that has undergirded her career.
Harris' campaign is a powerful reminder to our generation of the women who paved the way and pushed for a politic of the people, by the people and for the people. Regardless of the outcome, Kamala Harris' campaign is an inspiration to a generation of young girls, boys, men and women who wish to make their voices heard, experiences respected and freedom honored. It instills a sense of hope and optimism for the future of inclusive and representative politics.
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The junkification of American life … and of our advocacy
Sep 26, 2024
Harris is the author of “Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy” and the founder of RESULTS and Civic Courage. This is part of a series focused on better understanding transformational advocacy: citizens awakening to their power.
In a recent New York Times column titled “The Junkification of American Life,” David Brooks wrote about society’s rush to the bottom. “[W]e settle for the junky things that provide the quick dopamine hits,” Brooks wrote. “We could all be eating a Mediterranean diet, but instead it’s potato chips and cherry Coke. … [W]e’re now in a culture in which we want worse things — the cheap hit over the long flourishing. You reach for immediate gratification, but it fails to satisfy. It just puts you on a hamster wheel of looking for the next mild stimulus and pretty soon you’re in the land of addiction and junk food, you just keep scrolling.”
Social media, laziness and low expectations have brought us the junkification of advocacy too. It’s much easier to ask our members to sign an online petition that almost no congressional aide thinks is highly effective. It’s much easier to ask our members to sign and email a form letter than to ask them to meet with their members of Congress and do some practice sessions ahead of time. To do that, you have to get organized. You have to talk to people. You have to face rejection.
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I was on a panel at Stanford University when someone commented that people want to get more involved and are excited about being more active with their democracy. Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts, a fellow panelist, jumped in and said what I was thinking: It’s much easier to get people to the first meeting than it is to have them keep coming back. That’s the hard part and it is why we keep going for junk advocacy, preferring “the cheap hit over the long flourishing” that transformational advocacy can bring. It’s hard to engage people because of our deep levels of despair.
An article by Alabama Media Group political commentator Kyle Whitmire about yet another spate of gun violence spoke to the despair and hopelessness most people experience. Under the title “What reason have we given our children to love America?” Whitmire expressed the powerlessness and futility felt by most Americans when it comes to our ability to change government policy:
“I don’t think I ever really wanted to hurt anybody before, but when my son told me where his hiding place was in his classroom, for a second, I wanted to hurt everybody.
“Such is the feeling when you realize the world doesn’t care about the safety of your child.
“Such is the futility of that anger when you know there’s nothing you can do personally and nothing anyone else will do collectively.”
Whitmire’s sense of powerlessness resides in almost all of us and it won’t be released with more email form letters, it won’t be changed with actions that don’t change us. That’s what transformational advocacy seeks to address. It requires that we do the hard but fulfilling work. Talking to our members and inviting them to join and lead local chapters. Providing a monthly webinar with guest speakers, Q&A and inspiration. Providing in-depth and ongoing training. And, the piece that changes us: encouraging breakthroughs.
Brooks concluded his column with this: “I imagine the cultural decline … can be turned around if people can experience, at school or somewhere else, the emotional impact of a great film, a great novel, a great concert.”
Aren’t our nonprofit organizations a prime example of a “somewhere else”? If not, shouldn’t they be? Paraphrasing Brooks, I imagine the cultural decline can be turned around if people can experience from their nonprofit organizations the emotional impact of great advocacy — advocacy that changes an issue and changes them in the process.
That requires going for the long flourishing rather than the cheap hit.
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Reversing America’s decline is no easy task
Sep 26, 2024
Cooper is the author of “How America Works … and Why it Doesn’t.”
A recent Gallup poll shows that just 33 percent of Americans are satisfied with the nation’s position in the world today. This is down from 65 percent in 2000. It's not hard to understand these sentiments. America is struggling this century in measure after measure, from numerous public policy failures to increasingly dysfunctional politics to an epidemic of mental health issues among young people.
This predicament raises two essential questions: Is America’s downturn merely another temporary dip in a long arc of non-linear, yet upward, progress? Or is it the first phase of a steep national decline?
The answer lies with the American people. Like all nations, America is, above all, the hearts and minds of its people. And the trends are moving in the wrong direction: Things are getting worse, not better. Tribalism is intensifying. Social-media platforms are getting smarter at manipulating human cognition. The political system's defects are worsening. And America’s public policy failures are deepening.
The remedies are easy to state. We must improve civic education, spend more time with people from other political tribes, regulate the use of social media, rework the political structure to foster more political voices and equal representation, double down on free speech, feverishly guard our elections and support a new Republican champion other than Donald Trump.
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Yet in practice these goals have, so far, been impossible to achieve.
Two broad and overlapping global trends will only make reversing the free fall harder as time marches on. First, technology is getting more sophisticated — at a dizzying pace. The positives are huge. The internet democratizes education. Streaming innovations like Netflix enrich entertainment. New products like self-driving cars revolutionize transportation. Highly sophisticated research dramatically improves medicine. Pioneering technologies substantially broaden the distribution of necessities like food and clothing.
But the negatives are unnerving. Online innovations like deep fakes compound the internet’s harms. Poor cybersecurity undermines the safety of personal data. Popular applications like Chinese-owned TikTok give rival governments control over Americans’ private information. Artificial intelligence jeopardizes humanity in ways neither clear nor certain. Industrial innovations like fracking plunder the environment. Battlefield inventions like drones change the face of warfare.
Second, international affairs are getting more complicated. It took America a full two centuries to achieve global hegemony — and merely two decades to lose it. As former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in a September 2023 Foreign Affairs essay, geopolitical threats to America are multiplying: “The United States finds itself in a uniquely treacherous position: facing aggressive adversaries with a propensity to miscalculate yet incapable of mustering the unity and strength necessary to dissuade them.”
These dynamics establish a striking truism that looms over humanity: The world’s pre-eminent democracy is in decline precisely when the challenges faced by the world are mounting and its need for rational leadership has never been more urgent.
Somewhere beneath the thickening surface of tribal bedlam and political fervor, however, is still a core national impulse to confront and overcome big challenges. The question is how strong that impulse remains.
The French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in 1831 and 1832. A close observer of human behavior, de Tocqueville traveled across the country taking copious notes on what he saw. His book “Democracy in America” is a classic text in political science. And he’s been revered for capturing the true essence of America like few others have, either before or since.
Perhaps de Tocqueville’s most profound insight was that the “greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” America today is putting this thesis through a searing test. And the world will find out, soon enough, whether de Tocqueville’s insight is still true.
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Meet the change leaders: Cynthia Richie Terrell
Sep 26, 2024
Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Cynthia Richie Terrell, the founder and executive director of RepresentWomen, is an outspoken advocate for institutional reforms to advance women’s representation and leadership in the United States.
Terrell and her husband, Rob Richie. helped to found FairVote — a nonpartisan champion of electoral reforms that give voters greater choice, a stronger voice and a more representative democracy. Terrell has worked on projects related to women’s representation, democracy and voting system reform in the United States and has helped parliamentarians around the globe meet United Nations goals for women’s representation and leadership.
She has worked as campaign manager and field director for candidates for the presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate and governor. She has also been involved in state and city-wide initiative efforts, including a state equal rights amendment.
In 2024 Terrell was named one of Washington, D.C.’s top policy experts and received a Generational Impact Award for her work on voting system reform. Terrell is a member of Citizen University’s Civic Collaboratory and was named a Brewer fellow along with a cohort of leaders in the democracy reform movement. She has a chapter on women and the presidency in the 2020 volume of “The Best Candidate: Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times.”
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Terrell writes a weekly column on women’s representation for Ms. Magazine and has been published in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Hill, Refinery29, The Nation, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, The American Prospect, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun and The Christian Science Monitor. She has appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” and has participated in numerous radio shows, podcasts and panel discussions on the topics of electoral reform and systems strategies to advance women’s representation and leadership.
Terrell is an avid knitter and gardener, has three children, and is active in local politics and in the Quaker community. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science from Swarthmore College in 1986.
I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Terrell for the CityBiz “Meet the Change Leaders” series. Watch to learn the full extent of her democracy reform work.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
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