Brooklyn Kids Vote Obama

By Zahra Hankir and Gaia Pianigiani

In a mock vote held at the Lefferts Historic House, Brooklyn, some 74 children cast their ballots and elected Senator Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States. The children aged 3-10 gathered at the venue on Election Day, where they filled in voter registration forms before entering a voting booth. Obama won with an overwhelming majority of 65 votes, Senator John McCain earned 8 votes, and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney earned one.

The children were also taught about presidential elections and about how the voting bloc has changed over the years. New England traditional election cake was served as a treat.

This is the first time that the museum has held a mock vote. “We realized that this is a really big election and that it could be a fun way to engage children,” said Elyse Newman, organizer of the event and Education Curator of the museum.

Battered, but Not Beaten, Gay Republicans Remain in the Fold

Check out this Huffington Post article, written by our very own Brent Lang.

Gang member hopes Obama’s message of change can be his own

By Amy Tennery

To K.B., a 22-year-old member of the Bloods in Harlem, every marijuana sale presents an opportunity to get out the vote. While swapping money for drugs, K.B. espouses the virtues of Barack Obama.

 

K.B. is one of the more unusual volunteers in Obama’s efforts to win the White House. He has been in and out of prison over the last seven years, retaining a brand of street credibility few political activists enjoy. As a parolee, K.B. is ineligible to vote, but he campaigns with a veteran voter’s zeal, attaching himself to one of the only positive role models he’s ever had. He argues his background grants him access to a niche community: younger Harlem residents who don’t trust the political process. Like Obama, K.B. campaigns for change — change in his own life.

 

Until a month ago, K.B. had little interest in national politics. But when he met Chet Whye, president of Harlem 4 Obama, a political action group unaffiliated with the candidate’s official campaign, K.B. found home. Standing on the sidewalk, the two began a conversation about politics and how K.B. could become a part of the campaign, they both said.

 

Instantly, Whye — a political titan in Harlem — was drawn to K.B.’s charisma and enthusiasm. K.B. reminded him of the young Bloods and Crips he counseled while living in Denver — kids who, though on the wrong track, were essentially good, Whye said.  Despite K.B.’s troubled past, Whye introduced him to other members of his group — all the while unaware that K.B. was making money the only way he says he can: selling drugs. Even more troublesome, K.B. was promoting Obama at the same time.

 

Once inside Whye’s organization, K.B. tackled complicated data spreadsheets and learned the ins-and-outs of voter registration laws. He canvassed residents that other volunteers avoided or couldn’t reach. His efforts earned him real respect, Whye said.

“For him, everything about this campaign is different,” Whye said. “When he went into the Obama campaign, he was being treated differently. People didn’t talk down to him; people didn’t talk around him.”

 

At the vice presidential debate party at Harlem 4 Obama headquarters, Whye wrapped his arm around K.B.’s shoulder and beamed a father’s smile. K.B. discussed debate strategy, and said that although he disliked Sarah Palin’s politics, he felt she deserved respect, pointing out that all women do. He said he’d face down any gang member hurting a woman. His smile was warm, and when this reporter asked him for an interview, he looked at his shoes and chuckled quietly. 

 

In a neighborhood suspicious of political agendas, Whye said born-and-bred volunteers like K.B. are essential to success.

“There is no cavalry coming over the hill for us,” Whye said. “When you have a community mission everybody can speak, everybody can share. We can walk down the street and say hello to each other because we work together.”

 

K.B. and Whye believe that too many volunteers speak a vernacular that can be insulting to a young Harlem kid. Other volunteers use too broad a vocabulary, they say, but K.B. hits the perfect compromise — talking to Harlem kids without talking down to them.

 

“He’s very effective with a contingency of young black men who think that it doesn’t matter to support a candidate because the people they like usually lose,” Whye adds.

 

Growing up in Harlem, K.B. said the impulse to join a gang — to have a group on which he could rely — was strong. By the time he was 15, K.B. had joined the Bloods. That same year, he was convicted of shooting a man and he spent three years in prison. Just months after his release he was incarcerated again, he said, after police caught him with a firearm during vocational school spring break.

 

K.B. enrolled in nursing school, he said. He dreamed of becoming rich and successful, of having a kid and settling down. But his second stint in prison dashed all that. With each incarceration K.B. started back at the bottom. Employers, he found, didn’t want to hire a kid with a criminal record. A new career and life — the elusive change he sought — were increasingly difficult to attain. And so he took the one well-paying job that was easily available to him: selling marijuana on the street. 

 

Despite his mild-mannered speech, K.B. admits he’s easily riled. He got into a scuffle during the African American Day Parade in September and spent the day in jail. The last birthday he celebrated outside of prison was when he was 15.

 

K.B. sees Harlem 4 Obama as both a political movement and a safe haven from his demons.

 

“It’s not easy for me to do right,” K.B. said. “The company I keep — and I hate clichés, but it’s true — [it] determines my longevity.”

 

K.B. says Obama embodies all the decisions that K.B. wishes he himself had made.

 

“The Bloods, they try to justify everything they do,” K.B. said almost wistfully, about the company he’s kept for the last seven years and still isn’t ready to quit. “They quote all these rules that they don’t abide by when times get rough. They’re all ‘brotherly love.’ But at the end of the day, it’s love between your brothers.”

 

He parses Obama’s mass appeal with veteran skill.

 

“With market symbols — you know how you think of certain things when you see McDonald’s?” K.B. said. “I know to think good things when I see Obama.”

 

And so, he spends hours a week strolling along Harlem’s avenues, preaching Obama’s message of change and urging Harlem’s youth – including its gang members — to follow Obama and do right.

 

He mingles campaigning with dealing, he told this reporter, using his access as a trusted member of the street to influence others’ opinions. 

 

On Wednesday when this reporter asked Whye about K.B.’s drug sales, the mentor exploded in rage.

 

“I did not know!” Whye yelled. “We will not tolerate that here. We will not tolerate any destructive activity.”

 

Whye said he plans to fire his protégé when he next sees him. Both he and K.B. have refused to discuss what happened next.

Harlem 4 Obama and the Black Youth Vote

by Adam Taylor

 

Chet Whye, an organizer from Harlem 4 Obama, expects the turnout from young black voters will be high in the coming election.

“They’ve been streaming in here,” he says.

Harlem 4 Obama, a grassroots political organization promoting Barack Obama’s campaign in Harlem, is one place in New York where young black men and women can become involved politically. “What really impresses me about it,” he says, “is the twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings. They’ve never voted before, but they are impelled to vote.”

In the coming election, more than six million 18-29 year-old African-American voters will be eligible to vote, according to Rock The Vote. The organization, devoted to promoting young people’s involvement in politics, claims that African-American youth “are the most politically engaged racial/ethnic minority group in the country.”

In the 2004, election, the percentage of young African-Americans who voted surged to 49 percent, up from 42 percent four years earlier.

Whye dismisses claims that New York will definitely go Democrat. “We’re only one controversy away from being in trouble,” he says, before describing how the young people who sign up with Harlem 4 Obama can help turnout in swing states such as Pennsylvania.

Cornelius Rocks, his colleague from Harlem 4 Obama, has voted since he was in his 20s. Now 52, Rocks says, “I came from a generation of voters. It was part of our heritage to vote.”

He sees the Black youth vote as being influenced by music. “The Hip Hop generation is part of the Barack Obama campaign,” he says, describing the role that stars Russell Simons, P. Diddy and LL Cool J have played. Hip Hop Caucus, an organization formed in 2004 to get young people to vote, has been using hip hop stars such as T.I. to get people involved. For Rocks, however, the link goes farther. “It’s always been a part of the political spectrum, even back with Bill Clinton.”

According to data from Rock the Vote, 73 per cent of young African-American voters identify themselves as Democrats; Republicans comprise 9 percent of young African-American voters.

Tiffany Shorter is part of that minority. A 28-year-old Republican, Shorter says she believes that this year may bring a record number of young African-American voters to the polls. “The black youth vote will definitely increase this year mainly because many want to vote for Obama,” she says. “If he wins this will help preserve black voter participation because people will feel that their votes count.” Shorter write for the blog at HipHopRepublican.com, a site which presents young, black Republican views.

Leette Eaton-White, a black and Jewish voter who describes herself as a conservative Republican, is dismissive of criticisms to her political beliefs. “The Republicans have been a progressive party since the mid- 1800’s when the modern Republican Party was formed. We haven’t had to change too much for our ideas to be applicable in today’s society.”

Another writer for the Hip Hop Republican blog, Brooklyn-born Claudio Simpkins, says, “In 2004 people mobilized because of a dislike for George Bush. It wasn’t enough to just have a dislike for someone. Kerry wasn’t inspirational. There’s much more support from young black people for Obama.”

Simpkins, 23, a student at Harvard Law School and working for the Republican campaign, does not believe the youth vote will sway the vote. “More young people are voting, but I still think that as a group, we’re still underrepresented,” he says, “Part of it is structural, to do with the way that political parties work. They don’t get young people plugged into positions of power.”

Back at Harlem 4 Obama, Rocks is most excited about those actually too young to vote yet, not just to get them thinking about politics, but to get those around them thinking about it as well. “We give the kids little missions, make them a soldier for Obama, get them to stand to attention and salute us,” he says with a laugh

Whye adds, “You really couldn’t have a better marketing stream.”

In a Democratic year, in a Democratic City, a Republican emphasizes person over party

by Annie Jia 

            He came from China with $2,000 to his name, but after paying tuition, only $200 remained. He worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken and Dunkin’ Donuts, and made less than $20 a day to pay for college and rent.

 

Three decades later, Peter Koo, a Flushing businessman and the owner of the Starside Drugs pharmacy chain, is vying to become New York’s first Asian-American State Senator. The area, which has seen an explosion in Asian immigration in the past decade, produced the first Asian-American City Council member in 2000 and the first Asian-American man and woman elected to the State Assembly in 2004 and 2006.

Koo tells his rags-to-middle-class story often—especially on the stump.

“As an immigrant I came to America 32 years ago with nothing,” Koo said at a recent candidates’ panel in Forest Hills. “I achieved my American dream.”

As a newcomer and a Republican, Koo faces long odds against Democratic incumbent Toby Stavisky.  It’s a district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 4 to 1 and a year when the political tide has turned to the left, both nationwide and locally. New York Democrats have fixed their eyes on taking over the State Senate, where they trail by two seats, for the first time since 1965. And in a Senate District that extends over a multiethnic population of some 330,000—larger than both the Assembly and Council districts—the Asian-American vote will have less of an impact. 

So Koo and his supporters focus on his personal tale, speaking frequently of his character and life story. With support from a large constituency of young voters, they have launched an impassioned grassroots campaign. Koo sometimes identifies as an Independent, as the party has also endorsed him, and he hardly mentions race.

“They will vote for him not because he’s a Republican or Democrat, but because he’s Peter Koo,” said Walter Chi, Koo’s personal assistant who said that he himself in general “prefers” the Democratic Party.

Supporters stress Koo’s deep ties to the Flushing community as a leader and philanthropist. He is on the board of the Flushing Business Improvement District, president of the Flushing Chinese Business Association, a member of Community Board 7, and the treasurer of the LaGuardia Community College Foundation—to which he recently donated $100,000. He has also contributed to Christmas funds, hospitals, and a group that brings children in China with heart disease to the United States for surgery.

Koo says his connection to the community began with his pharmacy, where customers would come to him with a variety of issues, from pain to credit problems. Now, he says, people commonly approach him on the street for help or advice—like a mother whose anaorexic daughter and had threatened suicide.

“Peter has always done this type of work. He’s done a lot of charitable work,” said Oliver Tan, Koo’s campaign manager. “This is just a natural extension of what he has been doing.”

Koo’s rapport is strongest in Flushing, which is heavily Chinese American. In this area, Chi believes Koo’s ethnicity will help, although Koo himself believes the Asian-American community is not very politically active and will not give him an advantage.

It is unclear how the Asian-American vote will swing, but an exit poll study by the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund suggests the demographic is bluer than the overall population, both nationwide and locally. In the 2006 Attorney General’s race, the poll found that statewide, Asian-Americans favored the Democrats over Republicans 82 to 14 percent. In contrast, New York State Board of elections data show a 53 to 36 percent breakdown among the general population statewide, and a 64 to 21 percent race in Queens.

However well he does in Flushing, the 16^th Senate District extends far beyond the one community. Parts of Bayside, Elmhurst, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens Hills, Rego Park, and others are also included. In all Asian-Americans only comprise 22 percent of the district, Tan said.

“We encourage people to vote for the best candidate, not based on ethnicity,” he said. “He’s going to represent everybody.”

So the campaign has aggressively taken to the streets and hit the houses and organizations of those areas. On a typical day, Tan said, Koo will go to train and bus stations as early as 7 am to greet people. He’ll visit with civic groups, cultural groups, religious groups, and senior centers, and in the evenings he and volunteers go knocking door to door.

“That’s how we’re going to win, by getting Peter out there to shake as many hands as he can,” Tan said.

Tan estimated that the campaign meets with anywhere from eight to 20 organizations in a typical week, and that in a month and a half of going door-to-door – with approximately 90 doors opened every night, the campaign has reached thousands of homes.  

Jim Dandeneau, Stavisky’s chief of staff, said that though they have done some door-to-door campaigning, their efforts have centered on making phone calls, along with visits to supermarkets and transport hubs.

Much of Koo’s support comes from young voters, to whom they have actively reached out.  Early on Koo visited high schools and colleges to recruit students, said Virginia Ramirez, 26, who graduated from Laguardia this spring. A facebook group for Koo created around May currently has 266 members. More than 80 percent of the campaign’s volunteers are under 30, Tan said. 

In contrast, Stavisky’s campaign launched her facebook group just one month ago. In the past two weeks it has gone from 10 to 53 members.

When asked if the Stavisky camp was concerned about Koo, Dandeneau said, “It’s not something that we necessarily worry ourselves with.”

“I’m always concerned,” Stavisky said. “I don’t cram for a test. I work hard all year round.”

When asked what makes her a better candidate than Koo, the first response from Stavisky and Dandenau was that she is a Democrat and she supports Barack Obama. They also discussed her experience and legislative achievements, especially in the realm of education. “Ultimately,” Dandeneau said, “it’s that she’s been doing a good job.”

            After the recent candidates’ night, Joe Nocerino, 52, a local resident, expressed his support for Stavisky .“It’s a product of the times that I feel you need seasoned people here,” he said.  Nocerino, a registered Democrat who used to be Republican, said party is “not at all important” to him.

            Koo can only hope that there are a lot more Democrats who feel the same way— but who support him and the story he tells.