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Cake day: March 10th, 2024

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  • Are you puzzled by these numbers? Are you asking, “How could they think letting Trump win is going to make anything better?” Well, if you genuinely want to understand, read this reporting by Slate.

    Here are some highlights:

    I heard a similar sentiment from another patron, Fares, a Palestinian man who became a U.S. citizen 20 years ago, and voted for Biden in 2020. “I feel like, whether Republicans or Democrats, it’s all the same,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to vote for any because it doesn’t matter.” It’s a major shift for him. He was born in Syria to parents exiled in 1948 from what is now Haifa. He told me he hadn’t missed a presidential election before, but now he doesn’t see a point. “If 12,000 dead kids don’t change their hearts, you think you or I will?”

    In a conversation at Qahwah House, Elabed seemed tired. It had become obvious to her she could no longer support Biden, and she didn’t see why that was so hard to understand. “It is hard for me to reconcile my core beliefs and morals to support a president that dehumanizes my people,” Elabed said. “This is a president that I met in person. That knows my sister. That met my mom, who wore a traditional Palestinian thobe at the White House.”

    I posed the obvious question, asking if she thought Trump would be better. “What’s worse than genocide?” she retorted. “Maybe if the Democrats lose this election, they’ll learn their lesson. I’m happy to take several steps back if that’s what it takes to take a step forward.” When I argued, I got thousand-yard stares.









  • If you vote like the Arabic community, you’re throwing them under the bus?

    Slate went to Dearborn, MI:

    “If it came down to Trump and Joe Biden, I will vote for Trump. Because it doesn’t get worse than Joe Biden,” a man named Salah told me. His friend, Amad, added, “Biden was supposed to be the peacemaker. The comfort-maker. Instead, he became accessory to the biggest genocide in modern history.”

    “Imagine thinking it’s a good argument to say to a community that has lost 30,000 people, ‘Watch out for the guy that’s going to ban you.’ You’re really asking me whether I’m going to take a ban or a genocide? I’ll take a ban,” Zahr told me.

    “I mean, we’ve literally seen our families and our people being thrown into mass graves. Babies blown to bits. It’s not some far-off thing to us,” he said. “It’s been a struggle to declare our own humanity while mourning for our people being massacred.”

    The truth is Ahmed was one of the only Arabs I could find in Dearborn who openly admitted they actually planned to vote for Biden in November.