Trump Supporters - who are they?
11.9.16 Today, the day after probably the most contested election ever in American politics (certainly the strangest), feels like a good day to write. There's just so much to feel about the outcome many feared but also felt improbable. Donald Trump? President? Wow.
So why did this happen? What is going on in our country that have so many so distraught? Clearly there are those who are so disheartened by politics and politicians they felt that change was necessary and not just simple change but drastically different change. Loud revolutionary kind of change. But I wonder, are all Trump supporters really racist misogynistic xenophobes who can't wait to build a new berlin wall and lynch African Americans? As much as I'd like to believe that's the case, I've come to realize there are many reasons people vote the way they do and it doesn't always line up with my idea of who they are.
Yesterday, for the first time, I was a poll worker (no, not the performing art). I endured four hours of mind numbing training - for which I will be paid one hundred dollars - and worked from five a.m. until nine-thirty p.m. on what should have been my day off for an additional two hundred. Actually, I'm not even sure my own vote counted toward the election results because as a poll worker in a precinct other than my own I had to vote by absentee ballot. But the experience was invaluable. I'm not sure I'll ever do it again but I am glad I did.
As the realization of the day's occurrences settled in, I found myself wondering about the people I'd been helping. Did their support of Trump mean they hated me? Did they want to reinstate Jim Crow? Did they buy into the notion that men are superior?
The night before my poll worker debut was hectic. My child care plans fell through, my husband was acting weird and my insomnia kicked in. Still, I got up at three-thirty after having slept about an hour and a half, drove my eleven year old to her aunt's and arrived to work before daybreak. To be clear, I am an African American woman of Afro-Caribbean descent living in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York. My assignment - a Sephardic Jewish community center in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I didn't know what to expect and I harbored no assumptions. Yes, I'd hoped to be closer to home polling for New Yorkers with who's political ideas I knew I'd be familiar with, but maybe this experience would be more adventurous and less stressful. It was.
The center was comfortable and clean - as I figured it would be - and my coworkers were a diverse bunch of old and young, Muslims and Jews, homegrown Americans and implants. The day was calm and peaceful for the most part. Altogether there were probably just over a thousand voters. My lessons though, came from my job as Information Clerk.
The job itself was quite simple, look up a voter's address and inform them where to go to obtain their ballot. But it was talking to each voter that gave me the opportunity to see people who I wouldn't normally encounter in a more intimate way. Funny, the only other time in my life that I've been able to learn about others in such close quarters was during the five years I worked as a social service case manager. In any case, my eyes were opened to alternative political perspectives which showed me there are many reasons people vote the way they do and it doesn't necessarily mean they subscribe to racism or any other ism but woefully it does mean they may be poorly informed.
But I was even more taken aback that many of the constituents voicing their support for the real estate magnate were older women and they were obviously fired up.
White women against Hillary? In New York? Wow.
It also became apparent that at this precinct most voters hadn't participated in the electoral process for many years. Not only did they say as much, many had moved several times since they last voted and couldn't necessarily say where they'd lived when they registered to vote. Others didn't even known if they had registered and quite a few wanted to register on the spot, then vote. In this election. Wow. The result: many affidavit ballots were cast, in other words, not counted. But despite these minor technicalities the voters were unmistakably impassioned and eager to make their voices heard.
As the realization of the day's occurrences settled in, I found myself wondering about the people I'd been helping. Did their support of Trump mean they hated me? Did they want to reinstate Jim Crow laws? Did they really buy into the notion that men are superior? I suppose people could pretend to be nice while harboring hateful thoughts and desires but here they were inches away from me and I didn't feel threatened or even hated.
In that moment I realized how well Trump's propaganda tactics had pervaded the uninformed.
Perhaps I was just a non-issue, completely irrelevant to their existence, and it did feel that way at times, but on a whole I did not feel hostility resonating toward me or at all really. They had their reasons for how they felt and that was that... just like I did. In fact, one middle-aged lady who insisted on venting to me, even though I was not allowed to respond, gave me the biggest shock of all. "Wouldn't you" she asks, "rather vote for a clown than a witch?" Wow. "Do you know that she supports late term abortions? If a woman is nine months pregnant and suddenly decides, eh, I don't wanna have this baby, she can have an abortion! After the baby is already formed!!" Then she cast her ballot and on her way out thanked me for listening. In that moment I realized how well Trump's propaganda tactics had pervaded the uninformed.
To be sure, voting at this precinct was definitely a family affair. From babies - to young first time voters excited to exercise their right - to octogenarians being escorted by family members some wheelchair bound, I could see that the issues surrounding this election were a topic of discussion at home, in school, in the workplace and maybe even at places of worship.
The coordinator in charge, who was himself from the neighborhood, several times remarked that in the twenty-five years he'd been working at polling sites he'd never before seen such excitement and turn-out (I figured he must have always worked in Jewish neighborhoods because black people surely turned out in droves for Obama). But that alone was telling. Something had these voters aroused and by the election results - even though Clinton won New York - it had to be Donald Trump. Who are these Trump fanatics? They're people.
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