The election is several weeks behind us. Yet why does it seem so close? So heavy upon the hearts of millions? It is at the very heart of the feeling of despair that follows like a dark cloud. Some wonder how did this happen? And of all the audiences affected by this debacle, few fear it as keenly as Black women, who must see it as a rejection of their very selves. For Kamala Harris, a lawyer and a high public official for years, was facing a figure decried as a convicted felon, a fraudster, and one found liable of sexual assault in a civil case. How could she not win? The election answered that question rather decisively. But why? I suspected that women, having lost their constitutional rights due to the overturning of Roe v Wade, would ensure an overwhelming vote come election day. This didn’t happen.
The Israeli blitzkrieg against the occupied territory en Gaza also played a role. And a Jewish third party candidate, Jill Stein, won some eighteen percent of Michigan’s voters, mostly Arab-Americans who bristled at Harris’s defense of Israeli aggression as self- defense. Thirdly, in a community besieged by police repression, mass incarceration, unfair sentencing and trial, a number of Black voters jumped ship and joined the GOP rather than voting for a Black prosecutor. Harris seemed to depend on suburban, college-educated women to carry her over the rainbow, but it didn’t happen. Fear, it seems, (no pun intended) trumps gender. The Democratic Party is in the wilderness right now, at least for the time being. With love, not fear, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.