The temper was calm and sober on the Howard College campus as folks waited to listen to vice-president Kamala Harris’s concession speech on Wednesday afternoon. An space that’s normally the central hub of campus life, the Yard, was largely full of Harris marketing campaign employees, media and members of the general public.
Harris appeared about 25 minutes after her scheduled time and opened with a message on unity, constructing neighborhood and coalitions. “My coronary heart is full in the present day,” Harris stated. “Filled with coronary heart for my nation, and stuffed with resolve.
“Hear me once I say that the sunshine of America’s promise will all the time burn vivid. So long as we by no means quit and so long as we preserve preventing.”
Harris inspired younger folks to acknowledge their energy and to imagine within the not possible. “At the moment, it’s mandatory that individuals not grow to be complacent,” she added, “however to decide to organizing and mobilizing.” Harris inspired her supporters to embrace “the sunshine of optimism” and of service.
“Hear me once I say that the sunshine of America’s promise will all the time burn vivid. So long as we by no means quit and so long as we preserve preventing.”
Harris’s supporters expressed shock, grief and disillusionment as they mirrored upon the harrowing hours because the election was referred to as for Republican candidate, Donald Trump. As an alternative of feeling galvanized to construct resistance actions, voters stated that they wanted time to relaxation and reset earlier than pondering of subsequent steps after the election.
“It revealed to me the center of us as a nation,” 47-year-old Janeen Davis, a county authorities worker stated. “It’s taking my pleasure away. Being an Indigenous particular person, it hits me onerous. Our democracy is constructed upon our Indigenous ancestors … and a lot has been torn from the Indigenous neighborhood, and so now that that’s at stake, it’s like there’s nothing left.” Davis stated that she was in worry of political violence from Trump supporters if his opponents resist his presidency now. “My private opinion is due to how the transition occurred final election,” Davis stated. “The perfect factor that we are able to do is be nonetheless proper now.”
Patricia McDougall, a 63-year-old employees member at Howard College, stated that she felt unhappy. She believed that, had she gained, Harris would have supported immigrants and helped struggle for girls’s reproductive rights. “As an immigrant myself [from Belize], I really feel unhealthy concerning the people who find themselves going to be left behind,” McDougall stated. “I assumed that she was going to maneuver the needle and assist folks.”
As an envoy for the United Nations, McDougall expressed anxiousness about Trump’s overseas coverage strikes sooner or later, including that his “mouth destroys him.
“We’re all on edge to see what he’s going to do and the way he’s going to do.”
Davis was equally involved that Trump’s presidency could spell catastrophe for overseas relations. Since exit polls revealed how divided the citizens is, Davis warned: “A divided nation can’t stand, so it’s going to make us extra inclined to outdoors threats.”
Regardless of her defeat, voters stated that they had been happy with Harris and her marketing campaign group for what they completed within the months since inheriting Joe Biden’s marketing campaign after he dropped out of the race through the summer time. Nadia Brown, a political science professor at Georgetown College and a fellow Howard College alumna, had watched the election outcomes pour in from the campus on election night time. Returning to the scene after Harris’s crushing defeat was sobering, however she was in a spot of acceptance and didn’t really feel unhappiness.
For Brown, she stated that the election outcomes posed “bigger inquiries to ask round what the Democratic social gathering must do to take care of the core voting bloc”. She noticed that the issues of younger folks and progressives who opposed Israel’s struggle on Gaza the place greater than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since final October weren’t taken critically. Brown additionally referred to as into query the Democratic social gathering’s technique, saying: “The bottom was not shored up earlier than shifting to swing voters, which had been the Republicans who had been by no means Trumpers.”
Trying towards the longer term, Brown stated that the Democratic social gathering should rethink its outreach technique. “Black ladies specifically did a fantastic job. I’ve no regrets or onerous emotions about the best way that Black ladies confirmed up,” she stated. “However now it’s how [does the party] attain among the people.”
Learn extra of the Guardian’s 2024 US election protection
Supply hyperlink
