Al Jazeera
A second Trump presidency has raised concerns of migrant workers’ rights
Former US President Donald Trump has said if re-elected, there would be a return of ICE raids as during his first term.
Published On 15 Oct 202415 Oct 2024
On September 20, 2023, Rosa Sanchez went to work picking carrots at Grimmway Farms, one of the largest producers of carrots in the world, located in the Bakersfield, California, area of the United States. Unfortunately, she would not last the day. She was fatally struck by a truck in the field. She was 58 years old.
Fellow farm worker Alejandra Montoya saw the accident happen. Montoya said she was told to keep picking carrots as her colleague Sanchez’s lifeless body lay there. For her, that was a reckoning moment.
“I felt a very profound lack of respect for Rosa Sanchez, who had just been killed. They had everyone else literally work around the body. That really emphasised how they really care more about the product than about the workers,” Montoya told Al Jazeera via a translator.
Originally, Montoya was afraid to speak up. She told Al Jazeera that her supervisors would often subtly threaten to turn them into immigration officials if they tried to push for better working conditions.
“They really instil fear in anyone who speaks up. Anyone who doesn’t agree with the way things are, who says things to be better, they’ll tell them like, ‘Hey, you know, you’re undocumented, you shouldn’t say anything’. They’ll just straight up fire them, or people will quit on their own accord because they don’t want any trouble,” she continued.
Over the years, Montoya has worked for Grimmway through various labour contractors, a common practice in the agricultural sector. She was working for Esparza Enterprises at the time of the accident.
Grimmway told Al Jazeera in a statement that “the allegation that Grimmway supervisors and its subcontractors threatened employees based on immigration status is false, and Grimmway has a strict policy prohibiting retaliation against any employee or contract employee that reports suspected issues about working conditions. We are shocked to learn about these false allegations for the first time.”
Esparza Enterprises did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
United Farm Workers (UFW), the organisation that Montoya turned to to see the options she had to speak out about her concerns without risking her livelihood, told Al Jazeera that being on the receiving side of these threats was commonplace for migrant workers.
“It’s the simple fact that a workforce that’s scared of getting deported is one that won’t speak up for higher wages. It’s going to be less willing to unionise. It’s going to be one that might stay quiet when accidents happen,” UFW’s communications director, Antonio De Loera-Brust, told Al Jazeera.
Montoya is now protected from deportation through a programme put in place last year by the Department of Homeland Security for undocumented immigrants who are victims or witnesses of workplace exploitation and allows them to apply for deferred action.
“Employers who abuse their workers often say if you report me, ‘I’ll report you, and you’re the one who will be deported.’ What do we say to that? Not on our watch,” Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, told a crowd at the United Farm Workers annual meeting in Bakersfield, California last month.
“When workers report abuses, their immigration status cannot be weaponised against them,” Su added.
The programme, called Deferred Action Labor Enforcement or DALE, is what keeps Montoya safe from deportation and unafraid to speak up about the poor working conditions.
However, this could be short-lived. The looming potential of a second administration of Republican nominee Donald Trump has raised concerns about the future welfare of immigrant workers in the US.
“There is a sense of fear and terror that I and other workers feel when we hear talks of mass deportations and so on,” Montoya said.
Not only does Trump want to scrap the key migration measures that protect Montoya, but he and his hardline immigration advisers want to bring back policies fostering exploitative workplace practices that disproportionately affect migrant workers.
“It will be increasingly difficult for them to kind of stand up for themselves and speak up out of fear,” Nan Wu, research director for the American Immigration Council, told Al Jazeera.
Return of workplace raids
Trump and his hardline immigration ally Stephen Miller, largely considered the architect of Trump’s nativist immigration policy during his 2017- 2021 term, have said that roundups of migrants at workplaces and other public areas would return.
Some of the largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in years took place during Trump’s presidency. In 2019, immigration officials raided seven chicken processing facilities across Mississippi in the largest workplace raid in a decade and arrested 680 people at the meat processing community in Mississippi. Of those, 300 were ultimately released but Trump still touted this as a win. He said it served as “a very good deterrent”.
The Mississippi raid was one of the fourteen workplace ICE raids during Trump’s administration.
Two years later, when Joe Biden became president, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report referred to the practice of workforce raids as a way exploitative employers have used to suppress collective action for better working conditions. DHS then ended their use.
“Bringing back those ICE raids is really draconian. It just has a chilling effect on all kinds of aspects of our society. When we think about things like public safety and healthcare, migrants are less likely to seek help out of fear that their immigration status will be at risk. This is the similar impact,” David Chincanchan, policy director at the Workers Defense Action Fund, told Al Jazeera.
According to reporting from the outlet The Counter, managers at Koch Foods – one of the plants at the centre of the 2019 Mississippi raid – allegedly threatened several female employees at the plant with firing and deportation.
The threats came alongside sexual harassment and racial discrimination allegations against Koch Foods. The plant settled a lawsuit for $3.75m, only a year before the Mississippi raid. At the time, Koch said it did not knowingly hire undocumented workers, which reporting from The Counter disputes.
Koch Foods’s former parent company BC Rogers actively recruited Central American and Caribbean migrants to work in their facilities. The initiative was dubbed “The Hispanic Project”.
The company did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
Koch Foods is far from alone. Employers far and wide have used threats of reports to immigration officials to prevent pushes for better working conditions. This includes a construction company in Boston, Massachusetts in 2019 – a move which ultimately led to a lawsuit that forced the company to pay $650,000 in damages.
In another case, a restaurant owner in upstate New York allegedly tipped off immigration officials about the immigration status of a former worker, Xue Hui Zhang. ICE arrested him in the middle of a deposition in which he claimed that the very same employer owed him $200,000 in back wages.
“This kind of a negative pathway of scaring certain populations into taking less is already happening and it would get much, much worse for sure if there were workplace raids,” Saru Jayaraman, founder of One Fair Wage, an advocacy group pushing to raise US wages, told Al Jazeera.
“All the gains that workers, both immigrant and nonimmigrant, have been gaining over the last couple of years, you know, could be lost through this kind of activity,” Jayaraman continued.
While the raids under the Trump administration were some of the biggest in US history, the strategy was not isolated to his time in office.
In 2012, a group of undocumented migrants raised concerns about workplace safety issues and pay discrimination at All Dry Water Damage Experts, a Louisiana company tasked with cleaning up water damage after hurricanes that hit the gulf coast. The company then allegedly reported its own workers to immigration authorities.
Allegations of exploitative, misleading or low pay are a common problem, with 76 percent of immigrant workers in some past surveys reporting that they have been the victims of wage theft and 37 percent reporting earning less than minimum wage.
“All of this just gets so much worse if workers are afraid to speak up,” Jayaraman added.
Trump’s team said it would expedite the deportation process under an outdated law called the Alien Enemies Act which expands the ability to expel foreign nationals from a country that the US is at war with. This would essentially allow the Trump administration to deport people without due process.
The same law was invoked during World War II to imprison Japanese Americans in internment camps.
Trump has previously floated the idea of war in Mexico targeting drug cartels. UFW suggests that even the threat of such policies is enough to suppress workers.
“It is enough to scare a lot of workers into silence, into accepting bad working conditions and accepting unsafe working conditions and lower wages,” UFW’s De Loera-Brust said.
Trump allies cut key worker safeguards
Last year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill barring cities from crafting their own mandates. The move has been largely seen as political. Texas’s major cities are mostly Democratic and in favour of regulation – a stark contrast to its far-right conservative state government.
The law negated local workplace safety mandates like water breaks that cities like Dallas and Austin required, especially in sectors like construction that have an immigrant-heavy workforce.
Such policies put workers in unsafe conditions. Opponents of the laws say that they further elevate the need for workers to advocate for better working conditions.
“It raises the stakes because people are dying because of dangerous working conditions in Texas,” Chincanchan added.
Yet, the return of ICE raids will make it more risky for immigrant workers to push back against these new measures.
Migrant workers account for a staggering 40 percent of the construction sector’s workforce in the Lone Star State. While the law is in effect, it is being challenged in court on constitutional grounds.
Texas is also one of the most migrant-heavy states in the country. Its undocumented population is estimated at 1.7 million people, 85 percent of whom hail from Mexico and Central America.
This is at a time when Texas leads the country in new home construction and sees record heatwaves regularly. Last year was the second hottest summer on record there and killed more than 300 people.
Chincanchan says harsh immigration policies have deterred people from speaking out.
“They’re staying silent because of the fear of the highest consequences you can think of – being separated from your family and losing your livelihood,” Chincanchan continued.
Abbott’s representatives did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
Texas is not alone. In Florida, far-right Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a comparable bill into law which took effect in July and which prevents cities from enacting heat safety regulations.
This year, Florida clocked in its hottest summer on record.
The state did not have any of its own heat regulations on the books, which has shielded businesses from state-level repercussions for heat-related illnesses or deaths on their watch.
In Florida, non-citizen immigrant workers make up 22 percent of the outdoor workforce. That is almost twice as much of the demographic group’s overall share of the workforce.
DeSantis’s office did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
McNeill Labor Management, which provides agricultural workers to clients across Florida, was fined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) after a migrant worker died from a heatstroke in 2023 but was not subject to any repercussions on the state level. The company has said it would contest the federal fine.
The Department of Labor did not provide Al Jazeera with a statement.
McNeill Labor Management did not respond to a request for comment.
In July, OSHA proposed new rules that would mandate water and rest breaks. If the rule moves forward, it will go into effect in 2025.
If Trump is elected, it is not clear if the rule would stay in place or be enforced. During his term, Trump scaled back workplace safety inspections even as there were more workplace deaths.
“This combination of factors will create situations that will be extremely difficult for the workers to find to seek better working conditions for themselves,” American Immigration Council’s Wu added.
The Trump campaign did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
Video Duration 02 minutes 56 seconds02:56
Published On 5 Nov 20245 Nov 2024
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- After a heated presidential campaign, millions of voters across the United States are gearing up to cast their ballots on Election Day.
- Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are going head-to-head in a race that remains too close to call.
- What time do polls close in your state on Election Day in the US?Millions of Americans are set to cast their ballots after a heated presidential election campaign.Tuesday is the final day to cast a ballot, and below, we’ve assembled a broad overview of when polling stations close in each of the 50 states, which span six time zones. Check it out here.Click here to share on social media
- 20m ago (09:20 GMT)‘I Voted’ stickers are running their own contestIn Georgia, it’s adorned with a peach. In the seaside city of San Francisco, it boasts sea lions and the Golden Gate Bridge.The “I Voted” sticker is the traditional prize of casting a ballot on Election Day – and different jurisdictions around the US use their versions to show off their local pride.Some areas even encourage submissions from residents. A fan favourite this year came from Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, where 12-year-old Jane Hynous submitted a drawing to a local “I Voted” sticker competition – and came away victorious.Her entry? A deranged werewolf, ripping its shirt in two: a perfect portrait of the pathos of election season.
A volunteer helps cut “I Voted” stickers at the Boyle Heights Senior Center on Monday, in Los Angeles [Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo]Click here to share on social media - 30m ago (09:10 GMT)
Key economic data that landed in the final days of the raceThe monthly jobs report, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, showed that the economy added about 12,000 jobs in October. In September, by comparison, the economy added about 223,000 jobs.For Harris, who is rated as less competent than Trump to handle the economy in most polls, the report could have hardly arrived at a worse time. Unsurprisingly, the Trump campaign held up the report as evidence of economic mismanagement by the Biden-Harris administration, branding the jobs figure a “catastrophe”.The picture, however, is complicated by the fact that the period overlapped with hurricanes Helene and Milton and strike action by more than 30,000 Boeing employees.Even so, the figure fell well short of expectations: economists polled by Dow Jones, who took into account the hurricanes and the strike, had predicted 100,000 jobs. Still, there are other strong economic metrics to consider, too, including 2.8 percent growth in the third quarter.Click here to share on social media - 40m ago (09:00 GMT)Harris’s Indian ancestral village is praying for her victoryResidents of the tiny South Indian village of Thulasendrapuram in Tamil Nadu have gathered to pray for Harris, who could become the first United States leader with South Asian roots.Harris’s maternal grandfather was born in the village, about 350 kilometres (217 miles) from the southern coastal city of Chennai, more than 100 years ago. As an adult, he moved to Chennai, where he worked as a high-ranking government official until his retirement.Harris has never visited Thulasendrapuram and she has no living relatives in the village, but people here still venerate the family that made it big in the US.“Our village ancestors’ granddaughter is running as a US presidential candidate. Her victory will be happy news for every one of us,” M Natarajan, the temple priest, told The Associated Press.Natarajan led prayers in front of the image of the Hindu deity Ayyanar, a form of Lord Shiva. “Our deity is a very powerful God. If we pray well to him, he will make her victorious,” he said.
Villagers participate in special prayers for the victory of the Democratic presidential nominee in Thulasendrapuram, an ancestral village of Harris, in Tamil Nadu state, India [Aijaz Rahi/AP]Click here to share on social media - 50m ago (08:50 GMT)Texas, Missouri judges deny requests to block Justice Department from sending poll monitorsUS judges have denied requests from the Republican-led states of Missouri and Texas to block the federal government from sending lawyers to their states on Election Day to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws.Both states are among the 27 that the US Justice Department said it would send monitoring staff to at voting locations, as it has done regularly during national elections.Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had said sending monitors “infringes on States’ constitutional authority to run free and fair elections”.Trump continues to falsely claim that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud. He has urged his supporters to turn out at polling locations to watch for suspected fraud.Click here to share on social media
- 1h ago (08:40 GMT)It’s voting day. Here’s what polls say, what Harris and Trump are up toAccording to FiveThirtyEight’s daily tracker, Harris has a 1.2-point lead over Trump nationally, a margin that has remained fairly static in recent days, though it has shrunk compared with a month ago.In swing states, Harris has a one-point advantage in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to the same tracker.Harris spent the final day campaigning in Pennsylvania. The Democratic candidate started with an event in Scranton, the hometown of President Joe Biden.Trump continued his campaign with a whirlwind tour through North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan.In his first stop at Raleigh, North Carolina, the Republican candidate claimed a decisive advantage in the presidential race. He then went to Reading, Pennsylvania, where he again suggested that he would carry out mass deportations of immigrants.Read our full story here.Click here to share on social media
- 1h ago (08:30 GMT)US presidential candidates end their final campaign rallies
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Monday [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]
Supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris attend a campaign rally in Philadelphia [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]
Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump reacts during his campaign rally at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Tuesday [Brian Snyder/Reuters]
Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump dances at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids [Carlos Osorio/Reuters]Click here to share on social media - 1h ago (08:25 GMT)What did Harris say in her closing argument in Pennsylvania?Harris ended her campaign in Philadelphia, at the art museum steps made famous in the movie Rocky, and was introduced by Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga.“The momentum is on our side,” she said, focusing on optimism about the future and never mentioning Trump by name.She doubled down on the economy, a key issue for US voters grappling with unemployment and inflation, and outlined her plan to “build an economy where we bring down the cost of living”.Among the measures she intends to implement, she listed a ban on corporate price gouging on groceries; cutting taxes for workers, middle-class families and small businesses; and lowering healthcare costs, including the cost of home care for seniors.
Oprah Winfrey introduces US Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the eve of Election Day [Angela Weiss/ AFP]Click here to share on social media - Sign up for Al JazeeraAmericas Coverage NewsletterUS politics, Canada’s multiculturalism, South America’s geopolitical rise—we bring you the stories that matter.Subscribe
By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policyprotected by reCAPTCHA - 1h ago (08:24 GMT)A recap of the latest developmentsLet’s bring you up to speed:
- Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump have made their final appeals to American voters ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.
- Harris has stressed she intends to be a “president for all” at her closing campaign rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania while Trump pledges to lead the US to “new heights of glory” at an event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
- Polls continue to show the candidates locked in a close battle for the White House, with the race likely to come down to key swing states.
- More than 82 million Americans have voted ahead of Election Day, according to a tally by the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
- 1h ago (08:24 GMT)Photos: Harris and Trump deliver final pleas to US voters
Harris speaks during a rally in Pennsylvania, November 4 [Susan Walsh/AP Photo]
Trump dances at an event in Pennsylvania, November 4 [Chris Szagola/AP Photo]
[Jeenah Moon/Reuters]
Harris supporters ahead of her speech in Philadelphia [Hannah McKay/Reuters]Click here to share on social media - 1h ago (08:24 GMT)Where do Harris, Trump stand on key issues?Harris and Trump have spent months pitching their different visions for the country.The presidential candidates advocated to solve the country’s problems, diverging on most of the policies and only agreeing on some.From the economy to foreign policy, immigration, abortion and crime, we’ve taken a closer look at their campaign platforms and promises.Have a look at their positions on the key issues in our story, here.
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.675.2_en.html#goog_1829997514Play VideoVideo Duration 27 minutes 00 seconds27:00How will domestic issues shape the US election?Click here to share on social media - 1h ago (08:23 GMT)
How will US Election Day unfold?Millions of Americans will head to polling booths to cast their ballots in the US presidential election.Voters will also elect 34 US senators (out of 100) and all 435 members for the US House of Representatives, among other posts that are up for grabs.With the country stretching across six time zones, Election Day is a massive undertaking – and voting will begin as early as 5am EST (10:00 GMT) and go as late as 1am (06:00 GMT) on Wednesday.Check out our hour-by-hour breakdown of how Election Day will unfold, in our explainer, here.Click here to share on social media - 1h ago (08:23 GMT)What did Trump say in his closing argument in Michigan?Trump showed up more than 90 minutes after he was scheduled to begin his remarks in Grand Rapids, Michigan. An old clip of Trump shaving the head of disgraced former WWE CEO and longtime associate Vince McMahon on a wrestling show was played to entertain the crowd.He started the rally by recounting his unlikely victory in 2016 and then predicted the greatest victory ‘in the history of our country’. He even claimed that God had saved him from an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in July so that he could “save America.”He again linked immigration to a high crime rate, despite data showing the opposite, blending false claims about voter fraud with warnings about migrants committing crimes and promises to revitalise the United States.“Over the past four years, Americans have suffered one catastrophic failure, betrayal and humiliation after another,” Trump said. He added that “we do not have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline, and decay.”Click here to share on social media
- 1h ago (08:18 GMT)Welcome to our live coverageIt’s officially Election Day in the United States!Millions of Americans will head to the polls on November 5 to cast their ballots after a heated presidential election campaign.Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are locked in a close fight, with recent polls showing the race remains too close to call nationally and in key battleground states.Stay with Al Jazeera’s Live team as we bring you the latest developments, analyses and reactions from across the US.
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during his final campaign rally at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the early hours of Tuesday [Jeff Kowalsky/AFP]Click here to share on social media
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
The state’s top Democratic legal official says the giveaway in states likely to decide the US election is a ‘scam’.
Published On 5 Nov 20245 Nov 2024
A $1m-a-day voter sweepstakes operated by a political group established by billionaire Elon Musk can continue, a judge in the state of Pennsylvania has ruled.
Last month, the world’s richest man announced he would start the giveaway in seven battleground states likely to decide the outcome of the United States 2024 election.
Musk’s giveaway has widely been seen by many as an unsubtle attempt to secure extra votes for Republican candidate Donald Trump, who Musk has thrown his vocal and financial support behind.
Musk has given $75m to America PAC, a political action committee that has been funding various Republican candidates, including former President Trump.
Winners ‘not chosen by chance’
The Tesla CEO has already gifted $16m to registered swing-state voters who qualified for the giveaway by signing his political petition.
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Pennsylvania‘s Common Pleas Court Judge Angelo Foglietta’s decision on Monday came after a surprising day of testimony in a state court in which Musk’s aides acknowledged hand-picking the winners of the contest based on who would be the best spokespeople for his super PAC’s agenda.
Previously, the 53-year-old billionaire had claimed the winners would be chosen at random.
District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, called the process a scam “designed to actually influence a national election” and asked that it be shut down.
As it was, the judge ruled in favour of Musk and his America PAC.
Musk’s lawyer, Chris Gober, said the final two recipients before the presidential election would be announced in Arizona on Monday and Michigan on Tuesday.
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“The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance,” said Gober.
“We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”
‘They were scammed’
Chris Young, the director and treasurer of America PAC, testified that the recipients were vetted ahead of time, to “feel out their personality, [and] make sure they were someone whose values aligned” with the group.
Musk’s lawyers, defending the effort, called it “core political speech” given that participants were asked to sign a petition endorsing the US Constitution.
More than 1 million people from the seven battleground states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan – have registered for the sweepstakes by signing a petition saying they support the right to free speech and to bear arms, the first two amendments to the US Constitution.
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District Attorney Krasner has questioned how the PAC might use their data, which it will have on hand well past the election.
“They were scammed for their information,” Krasner said. “It has almost unlimited use.”
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
Support for Green Party candidate grows as some voters stress the need to break away from Democrats and Republicans.
By Ali Harb
Published On 4 Nov 20244 Nov 2024
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Dearborn, Michigan – On a sunny but frigid afternoon, dozens of protesters stood on a street corner in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn and chanted against Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris as well as her Republican rival Donald Trump.
“Trump and Harris, you can’t hide, no votes for genocide,” a keffiyeh-clad young woman chanted on a bullhorn. The small but spirited crowd echoed her words.
If not Trump or Harris for the next United States president, then who?
The Abandon Harris campaign that organised the protest has endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, demonstrating the growing disconnect that many Arabs and Muslims feel with both major parties over their support for Israel.
Stein has been gaining popularity in Arab and Muslim communities amid Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and Lebanon, public opinion polls show.
While the Green Party candidate is extremely unlikely to win the presidency, her supporters view voting for her as a principled choice that can set a foundation for greater viability for third-party candidates in the future.
Hassan Abdel Salam, a co-founder of the Abandon Harris campaign, said more and more voters are adopting the group’s position of ditching the two major candidates and backing Stein.
“She best exemplifies our position against genocide,” Abdel Salam said of the Green Party candidate, who has been vocal in supporting Palestinian rights.
The strategy
Abandon Harris has been urging voters against supporting the vice president over her pledge to continue arming Israel amid the US ally’s offensives in Gaza and Lebanon, which have killed more than 46,000 people.
Abdel Salam praised Stein as courageous and willing to take on both major parties despite recent attacks, especially by Democrats.
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For the Abandon Harris campaign, backing Stein is not only about principles; it is part of a broader strategy.
“Our goal is to punish the vice president because of the genocide, to then take the blame for her defeat to send a signal to the political landscape that you should never have ignored us,” Abdel Salam told Al Jazeera.
In addition to the endorsement of the Abandon Harris campaign, Stein has won the backing of the American Arab and Muslim Political Action Committee (AMPAC), a Dearborn-based political group.
“After extensive dialogue with both the Harris and Trump campaigns, we found no commitment to addressing the urgent concerns of our community, particularly the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon,” the group said in a statement last month.
“The need for a ceasefire remains paramount for Muslim and Arab American voters, yet neither campaign has offered a viable solution.”
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AMPAC added that it is backing Stein “based on her steadfast commitment to peace, justice, and a call for immediate ceasefires in conflict zones”.
With support for Stein on the rise in Michigan’s Arab and Muslim communities, where President Joe Biden won overwhelmingly in 2020, Democrats are noticing and pushing back.
Democrats target Stein
The Harris campaign released an advertisement aimed at Arab Americans in southeast Michigan that took a dig at third-party candidates.
In the commercial, Deputy Wayne County Executive Assad Turfe says Harris would help end the war in the Middle East as the camera zooms in on a cedar tree – Lebanon’s national symbol – hanging from his necklace.
Turfe warns voters in the video that Trump would bring more chaos and suffering if elected. “We also know a vote for a third party is a vote for Trump,” he says.
Stein’s supporters, however, categorically reject that argument.
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Palestinian comedian and activist Amer Zahr, who is running for a school board seat in Dearborn, argued that Democrats should be grateful that Stein is on the ballot and slammed the argument that a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump as “paternalistic”.
“It assumes that if Stein wasn’t there, we’d be out there voting for you,” Zahr told Al Jazeera.
“If it really were two parties and there were no other parties, I think most of the Arab Americans who are voting for Stein would vote for neither. And in fact, if there were really only two choices, a lot of the people who are voting for Stein right now out of anger for the Democratic Party might go for Trump.”
Zahr, who was on a shortlist of candidates that Stein considered for her vice presidential pick, also dismissed the argument that a vote for the Green Party would be “wasted” because it is unlikely to win.
“I mean news flash: Voters vote for people who speak to their issues,” he told Al Jazeera, praising Stein for standing up to Israel and running as an “openly anti-genocide” candidate.
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“Jill Stein, to me, is a noble vehicle to express our deep anger and the distrust and betrayal that we feel at the ballot box.”
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Video Duration 2 minutes 06 seconds2:06
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a separate commercial last month also proclaiming that “a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump”.
Stein has pushed back against that claim, slamming the Democrats’ attacks as a “fear campaign and smear campaign”.
She told Al Jazeera’s The Take podcast last week that the Democratic Party is coming after her instead of “addressing the issues like the genocide, which has lost Kamala Harris so many voters”.
‘I am sick of the two-party system’
While foreign policy may not be a top priority for the average US voter, numerous Arab and Muslim Americans interviewed by Al Jazeera over the past week said Israel’s assault on Lebanon and Gaza is their number one issue.
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And so, with both major-party presidential candidates voicing uncompromising support for Israel, some voters are looking to Stein to break away from the two parties and forge a new path.
“I am sick of the two-party system and their power play politics, where on both sides, they are unanimously agreeing on this bipartisan issue that they support Israel,” said Haneen Mahbuba, an Iraqi American voter.
With a keffiyeh-patterned scarf that says “Gaza” in Arabic around her neck, the bespectacled 30-year-old mother raised her voice in anger as she described the violence Israel is committing in Gaza and Lebanon with US support.
Mahbuba told Al Jazeera that she feels “empowered” by voting for Stein because she is not giving in to the “fearmongering” about the need to vote for the “lesser of two evils”. She added that it is Harris’s voters who are wasting their votes.
“They’re giving away their vote when they vote for the Democratic Party that has continuously dismissed us, disregarded us, silenced us and seen us as less important,” Mahbuba said.
‘Indistinguishable’
Stein ran for president in 2012, 2016 and 2020, but she failed to make a major impression on the elections.
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However, Stein’s Arab and Muslim supporters say this year, the Green Party can put a dent in the results to show the power of voters who prioritise Palestinian human rights.
Wissam Charafeddine, an activist in the Detroit area, said backing Stein is the right choice both morally and strategically.
“I’m the type of voter who believes that voting should be based on values and not politics. This is the core of democracy,” he said.
Charafeddine, who has voted for Stein in the past, added that Arab Americans are fortunate to be concentrated in a swing state where their votes are amplified.
“When we vote for Dr Jill Stein, we are not only voting [for] the right, moral platform that actually is most aligned with our values, interests, desires and priorities, but also it accounts for the Palestine vote and to the anti-genocide vote,” Charafeddine told Al Jazeera.
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Bottomline, advocates say the growing support for Stein shows that many Arab and Muslim voters have reached a tipping point with both the major parties’ support for Israel.
“Harris and Trump simply are indistinguishable to us because they passed a certain threshold that we cannot ever buy into the logic of lesser of two evils,” Abdel Salam told Al Jazeera.
“These are two genocidal parties, and we cannot put our hand with either of them.”
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
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CNN7 months agoCNN Poll: Harris and Trump are tied in North Carolina, while vice president leads in Nebraska’s 2nd District
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CNN7 months agoNew York Democrats are desperate to avoid repeat of their 2022 midterm collapse
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Donald Trump8 months agoWas Harris’s debate performance enough to win over undecided voters?
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Kamala Harris7 months agoExclusive: Harris to release new economic proposals this week on US wealth creation
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Debates8 months ago
US election: Blistering exchanges and fact checking in Kamala Harris and Donald Trump debate
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CNN7 months agoHarris’ cash edge funds advertising blitz as Elon Musk cuts big check to House Republicans, new filings show