DETROIT – On a rainy, cloudless night, a group of black men dressed all in black, some with pistols holstered to their hips and flyers in their hands, marched down one of the main strips on Detroit’s west side toward a solid point. . flow of handshakes and hugs.
“People know we really work. They see us here in the community,” said group leader Zeek Williams, amid honking horns from passing cars and renditions of Detroit’s ubiquitous colloquial greeting, “Whatup Doe!”
“We need to be here,” Williams said. “We have to be the ones who are here to support our people, make sure that we are, you know, striving for the culture, as we like to say.”
Williams is the founder of New Era Detroit, a community organization that connects residents of some of the city’s most disinvested neighborhoods with critically needed resources. Needs include public safety, housing support, and youth and political education programs, and the group does everything from armed patrols in crime hot spots to organizing massive community cleanup efforts and lockdown parties that double as fairs. resources. It is always seeking to secure subsidies and public funds to redistribute to the neediest neighborhoods.
Williams describes New Era Detroit’s role as bridging the often huge gap between the people and politicians of its city. It is not an explicitly political group. But it’s a window into a key group of voters that both parties are eyeing — and perhaps misunderstanding — ahead of the 2024 elections: Black men.
Public opinion polls reveal that more black men are in the running now than in previous elections. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are appealing to them. But there is also a lingering feeling among Williams and others in his orbit, in a big city that is a battleground, that no one in the political world is really trying to build real relationships with black people, especially black men like New Agers. Some question not only who to support for president, but also whether to vote.
“We are one of the leading local organizers in the city of Detroit. Literally the closest you’ll get to black people in this city,” Williams said. “But we haven’t heard anything from a Democrat or a Republican.”
Votes in dispute
Men like them, in communities like theirs, in swing states like Michigan, may feel forgotten, but they may very well hold the power to determine who wins the White House in November. And both Democrats and Republicans know this, competing in their own ways for the attention and votes of black men.
Trump controversially used his criminal court cases and launch of flashy gold sneakers to appeal to younger black men.
“I was indicted a second time, a third time and a fourth time, and a lot of people said that’s why black people like me,” Trump said this year at a gala sponsored by black conservatives in South Carolina, “because they were seriously hurt and discriminated against, and they actually saw me as if I was being discriminated against.”
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has stepped up engagement with Black voters. Late last month, Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off her “Economic Opportunity Tour,” a multicity effort to reconnect with Biden’s black support base and highlight what he has accomplished.
“The data is clear,” Harris told NBC News at his stop in Atlanta. “Black men have not benefited commensurately with other populations in terms of economic opportunity and economic health, let alone wealth creation.”
Harris continued the discussion a week later in a visit to Detroit, where she told the audience: “Since 2019, Black wealth has increased by 60%, so President Biden and I are clear: these are not just our accomplishments; they are yours. … It is the result of your motivation, your creativity and your power.”
And Biden spoke this week with a popular black radio host, Darian “Big Tigger” Morgan of WVEE-FM in Atlanta, where he talked about the Biden-Harris administration’s accomplishments for black Americans and what’s at stake in the election .
“Look, Trump has harmed black people every chance he’s had as president,” Biden said, pointing to unemployment rates, Trump’s tax cuts and Trump’s response to Covid-19 and its effect on black Americans. .
“Your vote is your voice,” Biden continued. “Lots of close elections, these last ones, and every vote counts.”
Ahead of the election, black voters’ traditional alignment with Democrats and Biden shows signs of declining.
Recent polls have found Trump in the low to mid 20s among Black voters — still well behind Biden, but also well ahead of where he polled in 2020.
And there are significant ruptures along generational and gender lines. Younger black voters are more open to the idea of supporting Trump. And while black women continue to be a more loyal Democratic voting bloc, black men have demonstrated more political malleability.
This could have big effects in a state like Michigan, where Trump won in 2016, in part due to a drop in black voter turnout in 2012. Although Hillary Clinton beat Trump in Detroit in 2016, she did so with 46,872 fewer votes than the President Barack Obama. I received it just four years earlier. And amid widespread dissatisfaction with the two major party candidates this year, there is concern among some that turnout could very well be similar to 2016.
Meanwhile, in recent months, Biden, Harris, Trump and third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have made trips to Michigan without visiting the mostly poor, mostly black neighborhoods where the New Age has left its mark.
While Biden has focused on traditional black voters and continues to meet them where they are, he may be ignoring a huge swath of atypical but accessible black voters. He’ll be back in Detroit this weekend, giving the keynote address at the Detroit NAACP chapter’s main fundraiser with thousands of people rocking and shaking Black Detroit, 10 miles and a world away from New York’s Detroit. It was.
The glaring absence of a true ground presence in New Era neighborhoods could spell trouble for the candidates in what will likely be a tight race.
“No one would be able to say that this is an election year in our communities unless someone comes to spend a day here and gives a speech. Other than that, you know, it’s business as usual,” Williams said. “You have to think, man, we live in communities where people are worried about their next meal, where people are worried about whether they’re going to be able to keep the lights on. So you have to excuse our people sometimes when we’re not all interested in two political candidates who ultimately don’t identify with or connect with us.”
On this day, Williams and his team were surveying an area in west Detroit that is more in need than most. At a gas station where women were robbed, they filled up customers and pointed to the New Era “Safe Zone” sticker on the station’s glass door, with instructions to scan a QR code if they were in danger. They walked past a nearby liquor store, with about six men, to check out the store clerks.
“Their presence lets people know we are all in this together. You know we’re not here alone,” said Sherri Smith, one of the vendors at a food hall called Whatcha Wanna Eat. “What they do for the community is worth its weight in gold.”
The verdict on political outreach: ‘It’s not real’
Back at New Era’s headquarters, a gutted, renovated and converted former pot shop, the walls are filled with photos of the group’s work in the community. and a large map of the US, with markers pointing to a growing list of New Age chapter cities, among them Baltimore; Cleveland; Newark, New Jersey; Philadelphia; and Miami.
“At this location, we provide all different types of tangible resources,” Williams said, citing difficulties with utility bills and dealing with harassment in the community.
This type of connection in the community placed the group in an enviable political space. It has worked with local candidates to help introduce them to potential voters and hosts voter education classes so people have a better understanding of political issues and how they affect them and their communities.
“When people come to our communities and ask for votes, and we know we’ve never seen this person before, and they finally come to our communities and say, ‘Hey, you know, I’m trying to get your vote,’ it gets done. We know it’s fake. We know it’s not real. So it discourages us from the process,” Williams said.
“The things that politicians should be able to do for us in our communities are real things,” he continued. But the connection between the political system and the community “didn’t seem real to us”.
That afternoon, a line of people stretched from New Era’s front door to the parking lot. The organization ran a social media campaign about how to secure funding to help people in need. People who were facing eviction, were behind on utility bills, or needed help with medical debt came to see what New Era could do.
“It means a lot to me. This is my son and he’s doing what he’s always done: taking care of people,” said Ozzie Williams, Zeek’s father, who also works at New Era.
Asked if any of the presidential candidates piqued his interest or won his vote, he said only one: Joe Biden.
“My family and I are Democrats, okay? It is what it is. Donald Trump is Donald Trump,” he said.
Zeek Williams said neither Trump nor Biden have won his vote yet and he’s not even sure he’ll vote in the election. “How can you ask us as a whole, how can these people earn your vote? We have never seen these people. Do you know what I mean? They are not real people. When they come to Michigan and they come to these places – but it’s not in our places.”
DeAndre Richardson, a family friend who is also New Era’s primary school contact and part of New Era’s patrol unit, chimed in, saying he’s undecided between Biden and Trump, but that he’s also seeing a shift in way that many younger black men are interacting with political parties.
“Yes, they question a lot more. Mainly on the blue side. It’s a lot of people moving from blue to red, from blue to red, because people are seeing the type of person you are rather than your politics,” Richardson said.
All three men agreed on one other thing: Any candidate who wants to win and expand the black male vote will have to show up and be consistent.
“We just want to see you and touch you and feel your vibration,” Richardson said. “We are people of energy; we feel energy. So bring your energy back to the block. And then we will make our observations.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
