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11:40pm Nov. 5
Grove Hall community groups come together for election watch party
By Yawu Miller
At the Prince Hall lodge in Grove Hall, where a coalition of community-based organizations held an election night watch party, the deejay cut the music so the activists gathered there could hear updates on MSNBC.
“This is nerve-wracking,” said Mimi Ramos, executive director of New England United for Justice.
“It will get better,” said Dwaign Tyndall, executive director of Alternatives for Community and Environment. “We’ve been through this many times in our lives.”
Tyndall’s reassurances notwithstanding, Massachusetts voters have been expressing a range of responses to a presidential race that appeared too close to call well into the night — cautions optimism, anxious optimism and, like Ramos, just plain anxiety.
“I’m on edge,” said veteran political activist Charlotte Nelson. “I’ve been addicted to the media over the last three months. Witnessing everything that has happened has really dampened my spirit to a large extent.”
On the other hand, Nelson said, witnessing Vice President Kamala Harris’ nomination as the Democratic nominee has been a ray of light.
“The whole thing just gave me hope,” she said. “While I’m biting my nails, I hope we’ll all wake up to another victory like we had with Obama.”
The activists in the function hall were not mere bystanders in the national election. Many crossed state borders in support of the Harris Campaign. City Councilor Enrique Pepen knocked doors in New Hampshire and New York and, as a member of Latinos for Harris, made phone calls to Nevada.
Pepen said the Trump campaign’s decision to give airtime to a comic who compared Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage” may have driven many Latinos to Harris, judging from the phone calls he made.
“If there’s rhetoric against one Latino group, we come together,” he said. “People said it was the reason they weren’t voting for Trump. They weren’t voting for him because of Puerto Rico and what he said about Haitians and People of color in general.”
Others were more focused on local races. Activists staffed tables in the function hall during the day dispatching volunteers to push for higher voter turnout and in support of the referenda appearing on this year’s ballot.
Rahsaan Hall, president and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts Bay, said his organization participated in the Election Defenders program, dispatching volunteers to polling places where voters faced barriers to voting. This year, that included a polling place in Hyde Park, where voters were turned away after election officials ran out of ballots and the Shelburne Recreation Center, where machines that repeatedly rejected voters’ ballots had to be replaced.
“It’s concerning that polling locations in Boston can run out of ballots,” Hall said. “That should never happen.”
Boston’s balloting woes will likely pale in comparison to the legal challenges activists are expecting to see around the country.
“There’s going to be a lot of litigation, ballot counting and challenges starting tomorrow,” Hall said. “I’m hopeful that there’s a clear and decisive outcome. But we will see.”
12:13pm Nov. 5
Election day voting begins in Boston
By Yawu Miller
Voters in Boston turned out strong this morning, some driven by hope that Kamala Harris would be the first Black woman elected president, others by anxiety that Donald Trump could return to the White House, bringing his divisive politics back to Washington.
Ward 12 Democratic Committee member Victoria Williams chatted with other voters at the entrance to the Higginson School gymnasium, where four Roxbury precincts cast their Ballots.
“I’m anxious, nervous. Praying on it,” Williams said. “Somebody who talks about everybody and their mother, insults people and is a convicted criminal? Who wants that?”
Joao DePina, a florist and former Ward 12 Democratic Committee member, said he does.
“I’m voting Republican across the board,” Depina said.
“Even for Trump?” he was asked.
“I don’t believe in everything Trump says, but as a business owner, I don’t trust Kamala at all,” DePina responded.
While Trump will almost certainly lose in Democrat-controlled Massachusetts, where voters haven’t backed a Republican presidential candidate in 40 years, Trump won 32% of the vote in the state during the 2016 and 2020 elections.
But GOP totals in Ward 12, which includes predominantly Black and Latino precincts in Roxbury, never crack 10%. In 2020, Trump garnered just 6% of the vote.
Even the certainty that Kamala Harris will receive all 11 of the state’s Electoral College votes was of little comfort to Anthony Brewer, earlier this year elected 2nd Suffolk District Democratic State Committee man. Chatting with DePina and Williams, Brewer said he is hoping for a Harris victory.
“I’m praying that the people are interested in something new,” he said. “None of the hatred, the chaos and the divisive rhetoric we saw prior to 2020, and that people don’t forget January 6. That’s something you just don’t do. That was an act of treason against the country.”
At the Cathedral High gymnasium, where four South End precincts vote, Anthony Skeen said he hopes voters make history today.
“We don’t need Donald Trump in office,” he said. “He caused a whole lot of trouble in this country. If Vice President Harris wins, she’s going to make history, being the first woman and the first woman of color. It will make history for the United States of America.”
Voters lined up early outside of the Cathedral High gymnasium in the South End Credit: Yawu Miller
Voters chat outside the Higginson School in Roxbury Credit: Yawu Miller
