Call for Massive Voter Turnout

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor in Chief
“Trump is a racist, fascist, sexist, a bigot and a pathological liar,” charged  Lawrence Hamm, founder and chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress (P.O.P)  “Trump must be defeated.” 

This time next week the General Election will be over. The results should be in or close to being called. Or, voters speculate, no matter if it is Democratic V.P. Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump who claims victory, there could be weeks of dispute and discontent from the losing side. Unless of course, there is a landslide with an indisputable margin of victory. 

With congressional, senate, and local state elections and six state and city proposals, by Monday, October 28th, early 45 million voters had been cast nationally, voting throughout the city brought over 400,000 votes, 77,000 of them in Brooklyn alone.  

And, as the campaigning hits the final stretch, Trump keeps getting in his own way. During their debate last month, he charged that the Central Park/Exonerated 5–the five Black and Latino teens who had been falsely accused of the violent assault of a white jogger in Central Park in 1989, had not only admitted guilt in the case, but had also gone on to kill someone. None of which is true, and indeed the teens-now-grown-men were acquitted and awarded $41 million in 2014.

Trump had taken out full-page ads in New York media in 1989, calling for the death penalty for the five minors. 

This time around the Exonerated Five immediately decided to sue Trump for defamation immediately, as he said that they had participated in the “commission of criminal offenses, including offenses for which plaintiffs have never been charged or accused, offenses for which they were acquitted at trial and offenses for which they were conclusively exonerated and their convictions vacated.”

Speaking at the National Urban League #ReclaimYourVote rally in #Detroit, Yusef Salaam, who is now a Harlem City Council Member, said, “At 15 and 16 we were made to stand up for ourselves. We were made to face that evil that you now have to face once again. We were made to be strong so that we could stand up and say we are the Ambassadors of all the pain for all of the stories that have not yet been told. This is not just about the next 4 years. This is about the life of our children’s children’s children yet to be born. What America will they inherit? What will we do that would make it okay for them? Let’s vote  like our children’s lives depend on it because it does.” 

 “There must be massive voter mobilization,” said P.O.P.’s Chairman Hamm. “We must vote in record landslide numbers in order to hand Trump a crushing and incontestable defeat on Election Day in both the popular vote and the electoral college.” 

In a reverse Mr. October moment, on Sunday, Trump brought 19,000 people to Madison Square Garden in an obvious flex. But, it is the racist rhetoric that is making headlines. Again. A comedian slammed Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” while at literally the very same time, Harris was in battleground state Pennsylvania speaking with Latino voters.

Declaring that there are 450,000 Puerto Ricans in the swing state, “He said good-bye to Pennsylvania,” said Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, at a Monday rally in East Harlem.

Harris supporters dismiss critiques of her California D.A and A.G terms, they push the prosecutor versus the 34 felony-indicted Trump line, and tell voters to focus on who will benefit the community, and whose politics are closest to their own.

Former Brooklyn Brownstoner and decades-long Daily Challenge editor Dawad Philip told Our Time Press, “We are living in manufactured plastic times. We used to talk about grand things to aspire to, and have the context of a Rev. Herbert Daughtry and a Sonny Carson, but now we have Black men listening to Trump and not Barack who made us think when we heard him speak.”

Returning to Brooklyn from Trinidad to vote in next week’s election, Philip announced that there is “even a Trump watch party on the island, where you can get your MAGA hat when you enter. They think Kamala is not ready not just because she is a woman. There is a schism that has been created between Black men and Black women, and this is one of the results. We have to fight this detrimental agenda.”

“Neither of them has acknowledged that they are going to respond to the interests of African people here in the US,” said Brooklyn-based activist Shaheed Muhammad, “Kamala Harris went so far as to say in responding to reparations, that she is not going to do anything just for Black people specifically. That was enough to put me over the hill for her because I wasn’t convinced about her getting my vote from Jump Street–and Trump was not even a thought.”

The member of the December 12th Movement told Our Time Press that he advised the Black voting populace, “To do what their good sense, and their heart tells them to do. An educated electorate studies international and local affairs.” 

While Hamm said Harris-Tim Walz is “the only ticket with the potential strength to defeat Trump at the ballot box,” he stated, “I believe that if the Vice President called for an arms embargo against Israel to bring about an end to the war, it would improve her chances for victory in November. Continuing on the current course will only increase the chances of defeat.”  

As the December 12th Movement and CEMOTAP organize a pre-Black Solidarity Day event at Bethany Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon Marcus Garvey, Brooklyn State Senator Kevin Parker acknowledged this year’s Monday, 4th, November – traditionally a day before a General Election – Day of Absence from work, school and shopping to emphasize the power of Black people in the nation.

“The juxtaposition of Black Solidarity Day in New York and the upcoming National Election provides a monumental opportunity for the Black Community to show its power and influence,” Parker told Our Time Press. “As Vice President and a Presidential Candidate, Kamala Harris is positioned to be elected the first woman, first Black woman, and first Asian American woman to the highest office in the land. Likewise, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is similarly positioned to be the first Black Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Therefore, it cannot be business as usual. We must use every available resource to get out the vote – there needs to be coordinated efforts community by community, block by block, and family by family. I encourage everyone to ensure that non-voters and recently naturalized citizens in your circle of influence are registered to vote. And then take personal stock in getting them to the polls on election day – that means making a plan to vote and motivating others to do the same. This is not the time to leave our future up to chance.”