A Nation in Flux: Local Elections, National Debates, and a Polarized Future

photo by Janine Robinson

Erie Elections 2024

As the Unofficial Election results for Erie trickle in, the town’s ballot measures have shown candidates who appear to be leading and winning the election. 

However, per the Erie government website, Andrew Moore is set to win against Justin Brooks with 10,384 votes, while Justin Brooks has received 9,807 votes. This has placed Moore in the lead with 577 more votes. Council Members for District 1 have shown John Mortellaro leading with 2,652 votes, followed by Andrew Sawusch with 2,633 votes. 

One of the candidates running for District 2 has been met with heightened controversy. Dan Maloit, who the ballot measures have shown is placing third with 2,078 votes, has been served with a lawsuit for allegedly doxxing and posting nude photographs of an ex-partner online. 

The victim, who chose to stay unidentified, claims she had found out about the nude photos being posted online 2 years ago, back in 2022. Once she started doing a deeper search on the web, she realized that photos had actually been posted of her online dating back to 2016. 

Since these allegations have arisen, Maloit filed a countersuit in September and has denied any of them, claiming they are intended to sabotage his political career. In a Facebook post on November 4, 2024, Maloit states, “I believe the allegations are false and are made in addition to other private matters that exist between the plaintiff and myself.”

District 3 has shown Brian O’Connor leading with 2,626 votes, Travis Pinz with 1,612, and Emily Baer with 2,885. 

The city of Erie, with 11,566 votes, has voted yes for a 5% excise tax on the sale of Marijuana. This means that starting January 2025, a tax will be imposed on the sale of Marijuana both medicinally and recreationally. The big change is that Marijuana will be able to be sold and purchased in the city of Erie, something that hasn’t happened in the city since the legalization of Marijuana in Colorado back in 2012. 

962 yes votes have gone toward question 7B regarding RTD annexation. Over 90% of the city of Erie is already annexed into the RTD district. The RTD annexation vote would result in providing more unannexed areas in the city of Erie for public transportation systems such as the RTD. This voter approval will bring about multiple benefits for the people of Erie, including transportation services, access to rides, parking benefits, and free fares that would be eligible for residents and youth during the summers. 

What’s next? Election results for the city of Erie will be finalized on November 26, 2024. 

Stephen Redfearn

The City of Boulder responds to the NAACP

The NAACP has issued a press release expressing its concern about the recent hiring of Stephen Redfearn, a police officer with a dark reputation by the City of Boulder. 

Stephen Redfearn was recently hired last year into a permanent position as head police chief in the City of Boulder. On October 14 of this year, the NAACP released a press release condemning the hiring of Stephen Redfearn due to his history of covering up the murder of Elijah McClain.  

In the press release submitted to YS, the NAACP claims that Redfearn is not only “anti-black” but also lacks “cultural competence,” which should, by all rights, disqualify him for the position of head police chief of the City of Boulder. 

The press release also contained a transcript of a recorded confidential meeting that took place in July of this year between members of the City of Boulder and Stephen Redfearn.

According to the City of Boulder’s manager, Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde, the meeting was secretly recorded without the members’ knowledge or consent, and members were asked to sign an agreement not to publish any details of the meeting anywhere online. According to Colorado law, Colorado is a one-party state, meaning that the NAACP did not need to inform the members of the City of Boulder that they were being recorded. 

The press release provided by the NAACP contains a transcript of the recording during the meeting. In this transcript, there were heated exchanges between Redfearn and Darren O’Connor, the chair of the NAACP Boulder County’s criminal justice committee. A “crude” comment was made toward Redfearn’s sexuality by O’Connor, which prompted Redfearn to express his being gay as a prominent reason why the NAACP condemned his hiring. Redfearn further claims that O’Connor smirked at him during the meeting anytime Redfearn spoke, resulting in questionable comments made by Redfearn that prompted O’Connor to state that such comments further prop up  “a system of racism.”

Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde recently came forward, issuing a statement accusing three members of the NAACP of blackmailing her with the recording. According to Rivera-Vandermyde, the members used the recording to pressure the City into not going through with the hiring of Redfearn. Rivera-Vandermyde claims that the NAACP’s actions have been “unethical and unacceptable.” Rivera-Vandermyde even goes as far as stating that Redfearn had nothing to do with Elijah’s murder, “Without repeating their misleading account of his involvement, I want to make clear again that there were no allegations against then-Aurora Police Captain Redfearn in connection with this case.”

What’s next? There have been no updates pertaining to the hiring of Stephen Redfearn. In an email sent to Boulder Weekly, Darren O’Connor said, “The lack of good faith begins and ends with her (Rivera-Vandermyde) and Redfearn,” he closes it by saying, “The truth is, she spent the City’s time and money creating a sham process in which Redfearn was always going to be chosen. An untold amount of money was spent hiring facilitators of the conversation, with the hope that the offering of a conversation would be sufficient to silence our critiques.”

graphic by Ray Manzari

2024 Elections and Blaming Minorities for Trump’s Victory 

As the old saying goes, if you scratch a liberal hard enough, a fascist bleeds.

As Donald Trump embraces his second Presidential election win, rather than focusing energy on the Democratic party and why Harris’ party did not succeed, strategists and even voters have succumbed to blaming minorities — many who make up only less than 1 percent of the American population — as being the main reason for Trump’s victory. 

Poll trackers show that 54% of the Latino population intended to vote for Harris and 33% for Trump. However, the final numbers came out as 55% of white and Hispanic males voted for Trump, while 53% of white women also did. Yet Muslims are often taking the blame for Harris’ loss. According to the Council of Islamic Relations, the Democrats had 22,000 fewer votes this year from Arab Americans and saw a 9,000 vote increase for Donald Trump. CAIR has listed that 53.2% of the Arab vote went to Jill Stein, while 21.4% of the Arab American vote went to Trump, and about 20.3% went to Harris. 

While many Democratic voters and strategists claim that a vote for the Green party is a vote for Trump, that isn’t entirely the case. Prior to the election, many Arab Americans, allies, and anti-genocide voters had expressed the importance of voting for the Green party as a message to the Biden and Harris administrations that genocide is a staunch red line for many American voters. Newsweek states, “Roughly 60 percent of us here in the United States now say the two-party system has failed.” 

Following the election, many Harris voters resorted to social media to express their outrage and fears with Trump’s newly announced presidency by scapegoating Arab Americans, Black men (who voted 78% for Harris, down 2% from 2020) as well as other minorities for the failure of Harris’ campaign. 

A series of tweets, TikTok, and social media posts by Democratic voters displaying racist and disturbing reactions toward Trump’s victory swarmed social media outlets. Many Democratic strategists blamed others, and even die-hard true-blue Democrats called for death and violence against Arabs and other minorities, as well as calling for the complete obliteration of Gaza, “When Gaza is Blown off the map, they’ll have Trump’s vote to thank.” one user tweets. “Good luck with new Trump settlements,” another user comments on Instagram. Another prominent Twitter user by the name of Derrick Daniello, whose account was recently suspended, tweets, “Don’t worry… they’re gonna die under Trump. I hope Netanyahu levels Gaza…America isn’t an Arab state. The craziness we see in Europe will never happen in America.”

Latino and Hispanic Americans have also been faced with the brunt of the Democratic reaction to Trump’s win, as many Democrats expressed their lack of care and support for the deportation of Latinos and Hispanics who voted for Trump. The American Journalist Ronald Martin told the Independent, ““If that dude’s [a Trump voter] mama gets deported, that’s on him, and I’m gonna play Scarface’s ‘No Tears,’” expressing no sympathy toward the deportation of Latinos and directing the blame on them for voting for a presidency that many claims is Anti-immigrant. 

While Arab Americans, specifically Palestinian and Lebanese Americans, have been witness to the relentless annihilation of their people and destruction of their homes, the Democratic party and its followers believe that Arab Americans should unequivocally stand by the party that is funding the murder of their families. 

According to the United Nations, the number of children killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7 is higher than four years of world conflict. Two days before the election, Al Jazeera stated that 70% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza have been women and children. 

What’s next? Are American voters seeking justice and reform today, or only when it pertains to them? While the next four years may seem rather bleak, one thing that we Americans can take the time to do is reflect and focus our energy inward toward the failure of the Democratic party that felt imperialism and genocide were more important than winning an election.