Overview:
The news that President Biden is stepping down in favor of VP Kamala Harris on the 2024 Democratic ticket has electrified some Black and South Asian communities in the US. Sara Lomax and Mitra Kalita discuss what’s at stake. What contradictions exist in the Democratic Party and within VP Harris’ legacy? And what lessons can the American left learn from the global fight against the far right? Joining the discussion are Epicenter NYC editorial director Femi Redwood and Scroll’s politics editor Shoaib Daniyal.
Within hours of President Joe Biden declaring he wasn’t seeking re-election, Black communities sprang into action. Tens of thousands gathered virtually to endorse VP Kamala Harris and raise money for her presidential campaign. URL Media partner TanTV reported that over 1 million dollars was raised from the virtual gathering of 44,000 Black women.
You may know that Black women have been a pillar of the Democratic Party base. In the last election, 90% of Black women voted for the Biden-Harris ticket and in the prior election, 94% of Black women voted for the Democrats. That level of party allegiance is hard to find amongst other groups.
On the flipside, is the Democratic Party as strong a supporter of the Black community? Femi Redwood commented on the contradiction of this politically engaged community suffering a disproportionate level of institutional violence. Redwood says:
“Currently right now, this moment, it is trending about the black woman who was shot and killed by police after calling police for help. And so there’s this… bittersweet moment for me where yet again Black folks are expected, Black women are expected, to save the country but the country isn’t really expected to save us.”
Police violence against communities of color is particularly relevant to VP Harris’s career. Her work as attorney general fueled mass incarceration in California, reported on by URL Media Partner Capital B News. Sara Lomax, Co-founder of URL Media and President of WURD Radio explains:
“Within the party, within the Black community, probably within the South Asian community, even internally, as proud as, and as excited as we are very soon, there will be many questions and many concerns and things will start to surface… There are a lot of complexities, people concerned about her role as a district attorney in San Francisco and attorney general and her being… allied with the cops. What is her platform around criminal justice?”
Beyond criminal justice, the larger political fight is against the far right, in the US and beyond. We’re seeing far right movements sweep into electoral politics with hate fueled campaigns.
The far right won seats in recent elections in the UK, France and India. Across all of these countries racial division and misinformation are amplified on social media platforms. Shoaib Daniyal, political editor at URL Media partner Scroll describes how the far right in India are master manipulators:
“There is a lot of hate on Indian social media. The right has really, to their credit, they’ve really leveraged social media very, very well. In fact, in India, it’s a very organized way, the BJP, which is the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is the main right wing party and the ruling party in India has really, very early on, it saw the potential of social media and it sort of moved to capture it.”
Daniyal goes on to say that the hate the ring wing spews extends to the journalists reporting on it as well:
“Journalists in India who are independent, who write against the government, it’s almost, it’s part of our day because it’s so loud. Unfortunately, tech giants have not done much about it… I don’t think it’s a very high priority for them. It’s almost baked into their business model because it is also high engagement for them.”
Meanwhile, journalists are contemplating how disconnected news content is from disinformation and how to bridge the gap. Mitra Kalita, CEO of URL Media and co-founder of Epicenter NYC says,
“I’m really concerned about the media that we’re not seeing on the right… The intersection of our communities with Trump voters is not many fold. And so I am concerned about these deep entrenched networks. And whether mainstream media has figured out how to cover them, and I don’t mean that in any, giving a platform way, I really mean do we know what’s coming and what’s going on?”
And while we don’t know exactly what will come, folks are bracing themselves for the onslaught of racism and sexism that will be spewed at VP Kamala Harris. Redwood’s newsroom Epicenter NYC, a founding member of the URL Media network, has already reported on the misogynoir present in the first 48 hours since Biden’s announcement.
With the American elections around 100 days away, the world will be watching to see whoHarris names as her running mate and whether Donald Trump and the right wing can be defeated. What choice will Americans make in November?
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