HT Interview: Stick to Biden or Kamala, says Milwaukee black political leader

Angela Lang is the executive director of Black Leaders Organising for Communities (BLOC), a grassroots organisation in Milwaukee that aims to build long-term political power and access to economic opportunities for the community and train a pool of Black leaders with tools and resources. BLOC is among the countless outfits working on the ground to oppose Donald Trump and ensure a win for the Democratic Party in this year’s elections.

A day after the Republican National Convention ended in Milwaukee, Lang spoke to HT about the convention. But in a telling sign of the dilemmas confronting anti-Trump activists and Democratic Party sympathisers on the ground, especially in the Black community, she also spoke about Joe Biden and whether he should remain on the top of the ticket, explained why he has continued to enjoy the support of the Black community, how Blacks view Kamala Harris and her prospects as possibly the first Black woman to be the nominee of the party, and the politics of the next four months and beyond. 

The RNC came to your town. How did you feel and what were your key takeaways from the convention? 

I was lucky enough to take my staff out of town. We are a Black political organisation that’s outspoken. I had said we didn’t want RNC here in 2022 and we had also been outspoken against law enforcement. Given the threats against black organising, we didn’t feel safe. They told us that RNC would have a great economic impact, but even that didn’t happen from what I gathered from local businesses. 

You had folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene (a far-Right Republican Congresswoman) who went off on these homophobic rants. You had folks with signs that they were passing around talking about mass deportations. You had all of this very, very hateful rhetoric that does not align with Milwaukee or even Wisconsin’s values. And when you have all of that political and racial rhetoric combined with what also happened on Saturday with the former president’s assassination attempt and an increase of law enforcement — there were multiple agencies from all across the country, both federal and statewide that were here — it just felt like it was like a powder keg waiting to explode. 

Something bad did happen and a law enforcement official from outside the state killed a man. And this was on the same night of the Republican theme of ‘Keep America Safe Again’.

Trump after the assassination bid

What did you feel about Saturday’s assassination bid and how do you see its aftermath? 

I was very curious about what the former president was going to say in his speech; the man had a near-death experience. Did that change him as a person? Did that change how he talks about things? Did it change his rhetoric? And I watched his speech and I think we saw a little bit in the beginning when he told the story of that evening. We saw a little bit more tempered-down version and then it went right back into the Trump that we knew. 

I am curious to see if that will continue if he will have this more toned down, united rhetoric, or if will he continue to show us that he is the same Trump that we always knew and what that looks like. Is there going to be retribution, since this man, who some people love and I feel some of his supporters feel like they are in a cult, was almost just assassinated? I am curious to see what the remaining months of the election look like.

After Saturday, Republicans could have mounted an angry campaign. They did try to talk about unity and project a more humane side of Trump. Does that strike you as interesting or just tactical? 

It was very interesting. It was tactical. But I also think it was just the intensity of the situation. Maybe it was a wake-up call for some folks. And, interestingly, the backdrop and the theme was this call for unity, but then you still had the same people that hate black people, that hate LGBT folks, who were at the centre of it. So it’s like unity for who? You are all united in your hate against marginalised folks. But there wasn’t this countrywide unity for everyone, no matter what you look like or wherever you come from. There isn’t this nationwide unity. It feels like party unity and not uniting the country together. 

Is there an increase in support in the Black community for Trump, especially Black men? Polls seem to suggest that a little bit, right? And anecdotally, one can pick a little bit of it.

I get this question a lot. I don’t know any of the Black voters for Trump, but that’s not to say that they don’t exist. There is one guy (a supporter) in Wisconsin who is interviewed in the same press that I am interviewed all the time. 

I met someone on my way here. A Black man from the Dominican Republic, now a US citizen, a software engineer and a Lyft driver. He said he was a devout Christian and his values aligned with Trump. And then I tried to narrow it down and asked him about the specific values. And abortion was a big thing for him. I am not saying that that’s representative of course.

I think it goes to show that people are frustrated by the candidates that we have now. Biden wasn’t my first choice either. But what I am seeing is not folks going from Biden to Trump, but folks debating, am I voting for Biden or am I showing up at all? I don’t see them jumping completely to the other side. It’s like Trump doesn’t align with my values, there is no way I’m ever voting for him, but I don’t know what Biden has done, so I may not vote at all. 

The Biden-Harris debate

That’s a great segue for me to ask my next question. What’s happening in the Democratic party and what should happen?  Do you think Biden should drop out?

I honestly don’t know. I was watching the reporting and there was a letter that came out and one of our own state’s congressmen has signed on to that letter asking him to leave. I was someone who wanted a more progressive candidate months ago. If there were conversations about him stepping aside, I wish this would have been months ago. I am really worried about how late this is. We just came off the heels of the RNC, the DNC (Democratic National Convention) is in a few weeks and then it’s November. And so again, it sounds strange as someone who has been very critical and openly said, I didn’t want to have Biden, but I think we have missed that window. And if something isn’t decided in the next 24-48 hours, I think folks are in trouble. But honestly, I wish these conversations were months ago and not now.

What if the candidate is Kamala Harris?

Then that’s what we do. And then it is what it is.

But do you think that’s still less preferable at this stage than Biden? 

For me personally, I would like to see somebody more progressive. But I don’t think that’s realistic right now. I say this as someone who did not vote for her in the primaries. But if it isn’t Biden, it has to be Kamala Harris. Her being the first Black woman vice president, it would be hard for members of our own community, especially the older generations that have seen all of this, to know the importance of representation and what it means for her being there, to accept someone else. It would backfire if they try to put Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom because I think people see Kamala is next, Vice President Harris is next, and I think you would lose folks if you try to put somebody else in. You will lose the old-school Black folks who have a lot of respect for her and see her as potentially the next president. So I don’t know what should happen, but whatever people want to do, they got to figure it out and figure it out fast. 

Why is it that the most support that Biden has retained is actually from the Black Caucus? 

A: When I think of the Black community and the Black Caucus, I think of it in a generational sense. A lot of the younger folks are a lot more progressive and want to push a little bit more. Whereas a lot of the older folks, and even our congresswoman, Gwen Moore, have a different picture analysis. And they may have a realistic sense of, yeah, I may want a different person, but this is our reality. I think they are a lot more pragmatic and instead of pushing for better, they are just like, this is what it is we do. 

I thought of this in 2020 also and the fact that South Carolina and Jim Clyburn (a top Black Congressional leader) saved Biden’s candidacy. What are your thoughts on this?

Every four years, we find ourselves having the same conversations. This is the first time that I think those conversations have resulted in the situation that we are in now. But those conversations have been because the Black community because the stakes are so high, has prioritised viability.  

Neither Biden nor Kamala appears viable at the moment. Do you agree?

I think Kamala is more viable than Biden. Some of it is her energy level and her ability to relate. I wouldn’t be as nervous watching a debate if it was Kamala Harris. If it’s Joe Biden, I am nervous. 

A Black woman president

Do you see a country that has never elected a woman ready to elect a woman, a Black woman, an Indian-American woman, and a woman who is on the progressive side as president? 

I know. I know. Those are all good points. I don’t know if we are ready per se, but I think in contrast to what the alternative is, I think some folks would get ready. There is a younger fresh energy with Kamala Harris. If the situation was different and it was a more normal election, then absolutely, my first thought would be like, I don’t know if we are ready to elect a woman president yet. I wish we were. But right now, I don’t know if people are talking about that part of the electability because it’s like, here’s this existential threat to democracy. So the typical electability questions about race and gender don’t seem to be at play right now in the way that they typically would. I don’t hear people talking about that. That’s very interesting. 

That’s very interesting. Are you are suggesting this may be the best time because there are other issues at play?

Yes. Like I said, if this was a different election, then her race and gender would stand out a lot more. But right now, someone is just like, who can beat Trump? So it’s taking away some of the other barriers that Black women experience when they run for office.

What did you think of her VP term? Is there only misogyny and racism behind why the media narrative about her is what it is? Or do you think that she just wasn’t able to perform and live up to expectations?

I don’t know. I know she was doing the best she could. I know she was out talking about immigration when a lot was happening at the border. Biden sent her to be the one to go visit the border. But I think also, at the same time, the vice president doesn’t have much to do. Just attend events, give speeches, and shake hands. She has done that. She’s made notable trips to Milwaukee. She is coming back on Tuesday, which will be very interesting if there are decisions over the weekend and I was like, is this going to be the first campaign stop as a presidential candidate? We will see. But I think she is relatable to folks. People see her as a kind of auntie, she is young, and we know her. 

So just to understand this right, you still think it’s safer to stick with Biden, but if it is Kamala, momentum can be generated for her?

The reason I say it’s safer to stay with Biden is because of the timing. So if he were to drop out, then it has to be Kamala, in my opinion. It has to be. 

The fear of Trumpist agenda

Let me go back to Trump. What is the biggest fear - or the three big fears — that you have if Trump gets elected? 

I am going to give one because I think it encompasses everything. Fascism, quite frankly; rolling back every single human right that we have, not even the ones that we’re debating currently in this country, but things like clean drinking water and environment regulation. I think there is real concern about mass deportations. There are real concerns about LGBT folks and the care that they can receive. We also noticed an uptick since 2016 in hate crimes against different marginalised folks. If Trump is back in office, are people feeling more emboldened to do all of that? And then they are going to make sure that their ability to have guns isn’t deterred. And so I think all of that is just like this rise in fascism. If we lose our democracy, we lose everything and everything that comes with it. There is no conversation about policy. There is no conversation about term limits when you have a dictator. And this is what he said he wants to be. So to me, that’s the big overarching thing. 

Let me push back on that based on the three things I heard at the convention. The first is the Republican focus on inflation, domestic manufacturing, the perils of globalisation, working class over Wall Street rhetoric; they even got a union leader to come and speak. All of it made me feel this is what the Left was saying for 40 years and that there is today a working-class orientation to the party that Trump has fashioned. The second was immigration, and the subtext may be racist, but the framing of it, as a nation having secure borders, isn’t necessarily a radical Right argument. And then there was foreign policy where they projected Democrats as presiding over wars, criticised their party for Iraq and Afghanistan went after the Bush crowd, and said they would limit this. So two of these issues — economy and foreign policy — hew close to the Left, and one of them - borders — is a nationalist argument. 

Sure sure. I think what was interesting is that it felt like it wasn’t getting to the heart of what working Americans feel. There can be a lot of rhetoric in this working-class narrative. I will be very curious to see how that continues to play out and how they lean into that, because, at the same time, they are not a party that is friends to working-class folks. So it would be interesting, how they continue to spin it. I think what I noticed is that it just felt like everything was just big and abstract.

On borders, why in Wisconsin is that an issue for us? Granted, he is talking to everybody. But you see people trying to rally up things around immigration in states that it never will even impact. So I feel like what they are trying to do is do an us versus them that’s rooted in anti-Blackness and xenophobia. 

They suggested that immigrants are coming and taking Black jobs or Hispanic jobs.

Please tell me what the hell is a Black or Hispanic job. I don’t know. And Twitter has been having a field day, and I love all the memes on it since he said that at the debate. But yes, I caught that there was this intentional trying to pit Black and Brown people against each other too. It’s interesting what they are doing. They are trying to do this divide and conquer, but then they are also only talking about things that feel abstract, that sounds good on the face. Like, oh, maybe we should close our borders, or maybe we should protect this. They are saying it using a very innocent type of framing, but they are not talking about what they are banning. They are not talking about voter suppression. They did not talk about abortion. The things that people are experiencing on a day-to-day basis they didn’t talk about. They wanted to give these big theories.

And I felt all of those things in those three kinds of frames that you mentioned are all kind of rooted in this America First xenophobia.  We are going to take care of our home. We are not going to give money to anyone else. We have to take it. I think this is appealing to some folks when you are struggling and they are like, yeah, why are my tax dollars going to fund war crimes in Gaza and stuff like that? But I think that they are doing it in a way that is trying to also paint Black and Brown people as villains like you need to be worried about those people. That’s how it is coming across. 

The Democrats and race

Isn’t it a historic failure of the Left that the Right can appropriate these issues in the first place? 

Absolutely. Because I always say if Democrats had a real answer and understanding of how to talk about racism or even police violence, they wouldn’t constantly get back into a corner. And so they are always playing defence, not offence because they don’t know how to talk about race. 

How should they talk about race?

By being honest. By naming policies. By not being afraid of using terms like white supremacy or state-sanctioned violence. Let’s take a clear example and go back to the shooting that happened the other day here. Democrats are always decrying and talking about gun violence. When a cop shoots somebody, everyone is quiet about gun violence. How is that not gun violence as well? And there are ways that we could be talking about things such as reparations. It seems like every Black issue people are afraid to talk about because they are like, it’s complicated. 

Maybe the assumption is that if they talk about it, it will alienate the White vote. 

There has been some of that with elected officials who are like, I have to be careful what I say because I am trying to cater to some of the moderates. And so if you are not saying anything, then it allows the Republican party to fill the gap of what you are not saying. And to be like, okay, well there’s no narrative on this. We get to create one. And because they are the first and the loudest, Democrats will always be caught having to play defence.

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