Thomas Breen Photo
Brown-Dean.
One week after a nationwide wave of populist, conservative discontent helped Donald J. Trump win the presidency and Republicans retain majorities in both houses of the U.S. Congress, community leaders called for frustrated New Haveners to work together to protect abortion rights, protect immigrants, and prepare voters for the next election.
Dori Dumas, president of the Greater New Haven NAACP, called for more volunteers to help out with her branch’s year-round voter registration and civic education drives. Mary Elizabeth Smith, program director at Junta for Progressive Action, encouraged all New Haveners to participate in Junta’s regular Know Your Rights clinics. Susan Yolen, vice president at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, asked for more friendly faces to volunteer at their Whitney Avenue office on Saturdays to help welcome patients otherwise greeted by a weekly encampment of abortion protesters.
These calls to action, along with many other words of encouragement, soul-searching, concern, and resolve, were offered Tuesday night at a post-election conversation organized by the New Haven Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and held at the Bethel AME Church on Goffe Street.
Well over 100 people filled the church’s pews to participate in a conversation that focused on how best to respond to the surprising results of last week’s state and national elections, and how best to plan for a Donald J Trump presidency that has members this country’s religious, racial, and gender minorities worried.
Audience at Bethel AME Church.
The two hour conversation was moderated by Inner City News Editor, WNHH radio host and Delta sister Babz Rawls-Ivy. She coaxed expert understanding and strategies for survival from a panel of academic, political, and activist guest speakers, including Quinnipiac associate professor Khalilah Brown-Dean, State Sen. Gary Winfield, and Mayor Toni Harp.
Kai M. Perry, the social action chair for the New Haven alumnae chapter of the Deltas, set the tone for the event early in the evening as she led the audience through an exercise in group meditation, imploring those in attendance to breathe in deeply for hope and then exhale their fears and concerns.
“Breathe in for racial justice,” she said, her eyes shut and her hands over her diaphragm. “Exhale. Breathe in for affordable quality health care for women, girls, all of us. Exhale. Breathe in for the hopes you have for our community, and for a commitment to collective action. Exhale.”
As the evening progressed, each speaker sought to undergird that balance of hope and fear, breath and exhale, with a pointed look forward to the community organizing.
The first speaker of the evening was political scientist and public media analyst Brown-Dean, who explained some of the legal history, demographic trends and political mobilization that led to President-elect Trump’s upset victory last Tuesday.
Rawls-Ivy.
Brown-Dean paced through slide after slide of maps and statistics that covered the Shelby v. Holder Supreme Court decision to Trump’s barbershop get-out-the-vote initiatives. Trump’s victory was not the result of a much-bandied idea that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s candidacy suffered from a fatal “enthusiasm gap,” she explained. Rather, the election turned out the way it did because of the success of a decades-long push from conservative lawyers and judges to weaken the 1965 Voting Rights Act, as well as a sustained appeal from Republican lawmakers towards evangelical Christians and working-class voters skeptical of government insiders and longing for political change.
“We have to get away from the idea that says that just because you look like me, you must think like me and vote like me too,” she said, pointing towards exit polls that showed that 16 percent of African American men with college degrees and 11 percent of African American men without college degrees voted for Trump.
Winfield.
State Sen. Winfield took the stage next, bringing the conversation from the national to the state level.
“We were caught flatfooted,” he said, referring to Republican gains in Connecticut’s State Senate and General Assembly. (The makeup of the Senate is now evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.) “We went from having basically a super majority a few years ago to a divided State Senate today. We knew that a wave was coming our way, but we didn’t sit down and figure out what the message of the Connecticut Democratic Party was. Our state party was largely silent while the Republicans talked incessantly about businesses leaving Connecticut. And that was a big problem.”
One of the solutions, he suggested, is not just for the Democratic Party to better iron out its message, but also for reliably Democratic New Haven voters to dedicate their time and effort and money, when possible, to more embattled districts around the state.
“If you want to see the whole state adopt some of the policies that the people who are elected here push for,” he said, “we need the numbers. Because right now, it’s very difficult to get anything done.”
Harp.
Mayor Harp spoke about New Haven as a sanctuary city for its immigrant population, and how it will remain committed to protecting the rights of all of its residents regardless of the prevailing disposition of the national or state government. She warned of continued cuts to municipal funding from the state, and how a divided and recalcitrant government in Hartford will make it all the more difficult for New Haven to deliver on its commitment to social services.
She ended on a call to community-organizing arms: a message that everyone in the room was eager to hear as they sought to rally themselves from the surprise and fear resulting from last week’s election.
“Don’t move to Canada, stay here in fight,” she ended. “I believe we have to fight.”
Slide from the post-election conversation.