Dearborn’s population has the highest proportion of Arab-Americans in the United States, and last year became the first city where this population group has a majority. A little more people live here than in Porsgrunn, and a little fewer than in Drammen. But here, in Michigan, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have been very much in the run-up to the election campaign. Last Friday, Donald Trump visited The Great Commoner cafe in Dearborn. Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP This is because a third candidate seems to be drawing a lot of votes from the major parties: Jill Stein. Stein is on the ballot in most states, but as in previous elections, has no chance of winning. Nationally, she only gets a few percent of the people’s support, according to Forbes. Stein calls the war in Gaza a genocide, and has built his election platform this year on being a protest candidate. Here she is at a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the University of Washington. Photo: Christine Tannous / AP But the fact that Stein comes out hard against the US’s handling of the war in the Middle East resonates well with Muslims and Arab-American voters. For many news meetings in Dearborn, it is Stein or no one. Some also believe that the solution may be Trump. In this case, you can read about: Status of electors? Each state in the United States has a given number of electors based on population. Whoever gets the most votes in a state gets all the state’s electors. The candidate with the most electors in total wins the election. Harris 0% support Trump 0% support Average of the latest polls. Updated: Source: 538. More about news’s use of numbers. In the parking lot of a convenience store in eastern Dearborn, we find a kind of local journalist. Abdul Ali (32) enthusiastically tries to persuade a man to explain why he likes Trump. – Who are you voting for, asks Ali when the man hands him the phone. Veslebror snickers behind the mobile camera, but hides in the car when news comes over. Usually they film travels and “pranks”, says Ali. – Today it is a serious topic. I stop Muslim Americans and ask who they are voting for. – What do they say to you? – Many say that they do not want to vote for anyone. They care more about what’s happening in the Middle East, with the genocide stuff happening over there and the war. It is 80 percent certain that he will vote for Jill Stein, says Ali. The last 20 percent are in support of Trump. Photo: Ismail Burak Akkan / news Ali, who has relatives in Yemen, has not decided who he will support yet.It is between Jill Stein and Donald Trump. But he won’t lie to us: he likes Trump. – People here in the USA feel that the economy was much better when he was president. Several jobs, the schools were perfect, prices, everything was really good. Dearborn’s population has the highest percentage of Arab-Americans in the United States. A street artist is urging people to vote in Dearborn. She herself supports Harris and the Democrats. Photo: Ismail Burak Akkan / NRKDearborn’s population has the highest proportion of Arab-Americans in the USA. A street artist is urging people to vote in Dearborn. She herself supports Harris and the Democrats. Photo: ISMAIL BURAK AKKAN – I’m bad at politics. I’m terribly bad at politics. But I am telling you this based on the facts and my experience. Ismail Burak Akkan / news news meets them at the grocery store Dearborn Fresh Supermarket located in eastern Dearborn, right on the outskirts of Detroit. Ismail Burak Akkan / news Mohammed al-Kinani will vote for Trump – What he believes in matches what I believe in, and I feel that his foreign policy is a little better than the Democrats’. Ismail Burak Akkan / news Mohammed al-Kinani will vote for Trump – Every time the Democrats are in power it seems like we are at war, says al-Kinani. – When Trump was in power for four years, I felt that our economy was better, although the? And he is against abortion, as I am. Ismail Burak Akkan / news Habib Manassa is skeptical of the whole election – Media, Hollywood, everything works together and shapes people’s minds, he says. – I follow social media closely, because I think it gives us a good insight into what people think Ismail Burak Akkan / news Habib Manassa is skeptical of the whole election – On social media, how do you find out what is true and what is a hoax, asks news. – I listen to my brain and not my heart, he replies, and adds that he will not vote this year. Two hours north of Dearborn, many car lights roam over a darkened highway. On the horizon rises the illuminated tower of a mosque: the Islamic Center of Saginaw. The door is locked, but there is light inside. Two teenage boys are playing soccer in the entrance hall, and come to unlock. Photo: ISMAIL BURAK AKKAN / news Photo: ISMAIL BURAK AKKAN / news – Salam aleykum, peace be with you, they say, and news gets to join the last prayer of the day. When this is finished, Imam Musab Abdalla has with him an activist in the campaign group Abandon Harris. – We cannot challenge you to vote for one or the other, says Abdalla before giving up the floor. Politicians realized that Muslim Americans will decide Michigan, and who decides in Michigan will decide the White House, says activist Hassan Abdel Salam in the mosque. Photo: Ismail Burak Akkan / news – But we can inform you about the various candidates, and they can make the choice themselves. But the activist, former human rights researcher Hassan Salem, is urging people to turn their backs on both Harris and Trump. Instead, he asks those present to vote for third-party candidates, such as Stein. Among those listening is the southern Lebanese Habib. He would rather not have news use his surname. – Last week, my childhood home was bombed by Israel with American bombs, paid for with my tax money. news has not been able to confirm this attack, or whose bombs were used in that case. – But Jill Stein supports Palestine. She calls what is happening a genocide, and is in favor of stopping the weapons shipments, Habib insisted. CAIR, America’s largest civil rights organization for Muslims, published a poll last Friday. There, over 42 percent of the members asked said they would vote for Stein. 41 percent answered Harris, and almost 10 percent Trump. On October 6, Stein held a public meeting in Dearborn. Several hundred people from the local community were present. Photo: Rebecca Cook / Reuters A few days before the election, the organizers try to hold their own public meeting, in support of (but without) Stein. Almost no one has turned up. – In our local community, i.e. Muslim Arab-Americans, people don’t come out, says one of the speakers, Abdel Hassan Salem. – They talk together in the mosque and at the community centre. He is interrupted by a megaphone a block away where we say: “Kamala you are a liar! You have set fire to Palestine!” Photo: ISMAIL BURAK AKKAN / news Photo: ISMAIL BURAK AKKAN / news The people marching through the streets, to the despair of many drivers, have a wider political audience and are many more. – For me, it’s between Harris and Trump. I am closest to Trump, says one of them, Aseel Ali to news. The 20-year-old has relatives in Yemen, and is voting for the first time this election. Also present was a Lebanese woman with two small children. – I think that the candidates have really underestimated how important the Arab votes are here. Alison Ortega (33) – It’s going to be ugly on Tuesday, I think. She says that she will vote for a third candidate in the PSL, the party for liberation and socialism. – What kind of USA do you want to live in when you grow up, we ask our daughter Eulelia, who Ortega says has joined many of these. – One where there is no fighting, replies the seven-year-old. Another small protester has turned up with his mother to demand a ceasefire in Palestine. Photo: Ismail Burak Akkan / news
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The Jill Stein Effect – Urix
