Last Thursday’s dancing fest in Downtown Brooklyn at the old Albee Square/CitiPoint mall was jubilant and hopeful. People were talking to each other and just plain happy. It may have been directly related to VP Kamala Harris inching up in the National Polls. One person says it was.
Sunday morning, Reverend Rob’s Antioch Baptist church’s outdoor summer revival-like service was a study in Joy and gospel-power.
More people were observed talking to each other directly on the 52 bus as they shared thoughts on the elections.
Levity was in the air — all last week, and it is rising. We collected some faces and stories. At the first event, a young Afro-Peruvian dancer was talking proudly about his Inca and African heritage and registered sincere surprise that anyone would go to someone other than Kamala Harris.
At the Gates and Lewis bus stop, an elder shared how she, in her 90s, took her daughter and grand daughter to fill out a Voter registration application. Sunday, Rev. Rob, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church, where stories teem, and the parishioners are open to sharing them — one member is going back home to North Carolina after a 61 association with her BK church home, another is enjoying a one-year anniversary of sobriety after a life of turmoil.
But impressive, too, was Pastor Rob himself, who somehow managed to interweave the “final” call with a call for people to vote “but check God, through whom all things must flow first.” But both messages hit nicely, backed up by the background of a soundtrack that punctuated his every exclamation and declaration.
It was a week of good news. Then last night, at 9 pm, a heads-up came across our emails from a nationwide voting action group.
MoveOn has motivated and organized people to work together to build people power for two decades with the purpose of “ building a country and world where everyone can thrive.” That mission clearly puts them in the Harris camp, and from all appearances, they have been doing a good job raising money for the campaign. But we learned it’s not enough.
MoveOn wrote, “Vice President Kamala Harris has taken the lead in national polls. But pollsters have (issued) a big warning.” The picture wasn’t as rosy as all the unity we had seen and experienced.
MoveOn wrote: “Presidential elections are not won at the national level; they’re won in a small number of battleground states that decide the Electoral College. And one survey showed Harris trailing Donald Trump across five battleground states.” Trump was given a 55.8% chance of winning the Electoral College, and Harris, a 44% chance of victory.”
Harris said two weeks ago at the start of her campaign, “There’s work to be done.” Now, with only 61 days left til Election Day, MoveOut said, Harris supporters cannot waste a “single second to jump into action to overcome the odds.”
We think they will “jump.” But the question is: Will the vote count? Nothing other than a surge at the polls can make the difference needed. We are going where people work, live, and play to get responses as the mood changes and interest in Project 2025 picks up.
- by Bernice Elizabeth Green