This Election Will Be Won By Whoever Pushes Hardest — And Smartest. Here’s How To Push Folks The Right Way
Supporters holding US flags, wait before Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally on Oct. 29, 2024. | Source: Probal Rashid / Getty
We’re in the home stretch. As with anything in life, it’s that last leg of the journey that can be hardest to push ourselves through. But when we push ourselves over the line, there’s nothing like that feeling of celebration—and relief.
So here we are. The election is on Tuesday, and we need to continue pushing ourselves to fight for every vote just for a few more days. Because the truth is that this election will be won by whoever pushes the hardest and goes the extra mile. It’ll be won by whoever gets their friends, family and community to vote. In Philadelphia. Detroit. Milwaukee. Pittsburgh. Atlanta. Charlotte. Everywhere.
If we get two things right, we can win this.
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First, we need to get out there and make those phone calls and texts, knock on those doors, send those messages on social media and have those hard conversations with family that make us nervous. Right now, if we don’t get out and talk to people about the importance of voting, it’s almost as bad as not voting ourselves. Every last vote we help get will make the difference.
Donald Trump does not listen to us, and he does not care about what happens to Black people.
But second: When we talk to people—especially people unsure about voting or people thinking about voting with Trump—we need to avoid one big mistake. There’s been a lot of talk about what a racist, disgusting person Donald Trump is. And that’s true. But if that hasn’t persuaded people by now, it’s not going to. We can’t just focus on what Donald Trump says and his character.
We need to focus on what Donald Trump has done (or will do), and its impact on us. It’s not about what he’s said, it’s about what he’s done. People forgive or ignore what he says, but they can’t ignore what he does. Every time we truly make that clear to folks, they shift in our direction.
Donald Trump will give police officers complete immunity, no matter how violent they are, how much money they steal from people, or how many people they harass. That goes especially for Black people. He will also force police departments to mandate stop and frisk, creating a permanent state of treating all Black people like criminals.
He will militarize police, accelerate mass incarceration and roll back decades of progress. Donald Trump had more Black men executed than the federal government had put to death in decades. Biden and Harris stopped that. But if we let Trump back into the White House, we can be sure he’s going to start that up again.
Donald Trump will change the law so he can fill the federal government with people who will do whatever he wants, no questions asked. To do that, he will surely target Black people with government jobs, since we make up more than 18% of the federal workforce. Trump will absolutely do everything he can to fire and replace those Black workers, robbing them of the benefits, pay and security they get from federal jobs. Because that’s what we represent to him: a threat that needs to be eliminated.
Harris is not perfect, but we can work with her. She listens to us.
Donald Trump promised to pay for the funeral of a fallen soldier. When he was told the cost of burying fallen soldiers in the proper way, he said, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f—ing Mexican.” And he didn’t do it. He left the family stranded. Promise made. Promise broken.
Everything he says he’ll do to help us, he drops. Everything he does do hurts us.
Donald Trump tried to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency, a federal program that supports minority-owned businesses. Contrast that with the Biden/Harris administration, which tripled the Small Business Administration’s lending to Black-owned businesses and more than doubled small-dollar lending to Latino and women-owned businesses.
It’s not just about the nonsense Trump says in his speech, it’s that he can’t even get through them. The man is losing it. He can’t run the country. And so he’s going to turn it over to extremists, just like he did before, except this time there will be no one to stop his worst impulses.
When Trump was president, he appointed extremist judges. In fact, he appointed the most Appeals Court judges in decades — and not one of them was Black. He empowered people who defunded education in our communities, and let corporations pollute our neighborhoods. He’ll definitely stop everything Biden and Harris are doing to get rid of toxins like lead poisoning in our water and pipes, which ruin kids’ lives by seriously slowing down their brain and physical development.
The truth is that this election will be won by whoever pushes the hardest and goes the extra mile.
Harris is not perfect. She will do some great things. And we’ll need to push her on other things. But we can work with her. We can push her to do what’s right. She listens to us. Every day, there are people who work to make life better for Black people. Folks like LaTosha Brown of Black Voters Matter and Rev. William Barber. They devote their entire lives to it. And they’re all telling us they need Harris in that White House in order for their work to go anywhere. Harris will listen to them; so should we. They fight for us, and electing Harris increases their chances of winning those fights. Trump will destroy them.
Donald Trump does not listen to us, and he does not care about what happens to Black people. He’s the first one to sell out Black people whenever it helps those he does care about: billionaires who rob us, white nationalists who attack us and right-wingers who want to erase us. It’s up to us to make sure people really understand who they’re choosing, because with those choices, we’re choosing what is going to happen to us.
Rashad Robinson is the president of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization.
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