California

California is a traditionally democratic state, let's not forget that Kamala Harris was elected in this state, but California is also changing. The reason: internal migration and the flow of migrants. To understand what it is all about, just spend a weekend in Yosemite, the wonderful natural park east of San Francisco, and visit the headquarters of the Democratic Party in San Francisco.

The park was closed for several months due to an invasion of rats, yes that's right. After the rodent control it was the turn of the shelters that were almost all closed and it is not known when they will reopen. Among the few exceptions is Curry Village where, however, people sleep in white military-style tents under centuries-old sequoia trees.

It takes just twenty minutes to notice the degradation of the structures, some bathrooms are closed, the pool is empty and surrounded by barriers, there is work in progress a bit everywhere, in the drinking water station under the taps there is a container full of slime. The tents, then, are not clean, at the edges on the wooden floor there is sand and dirt.

Even worse is the situation of the bars and restaurants, three in total, which serve the entire area including the huts in the village next door. The line to buy a pizza lasts 45 minutes, impossible to find a table to sit at, there is a crowd from 5:30 pm until closing time at 9:30 pm. Extremely stressed waitresses try to satisfy a horde of hungry visitors. It is clear that the management of Yosemite has problems much bigger than the invasion of mice. But let's leave this topic aside and instead focus on the social and ethnic cross-section of Curry Village.

The vast majority are not tourists but people who live in California and who have decided to spend a weekend in the park. It is a relatively cheap holiday and therefore accessible to medium-low incomes. There are families with children, some with grandparents, young couples, large families, groups of boys and girls. The striking thing is that there are few whites and very few blacks, the visitors are Asians, Mexicans and Central Americans. After weeks traveling through the white America of the central states and the Indian reservations this new note of racial color strikes.

Here we are not at the Grand Canyon populated by tourists from all over the world, at the end of October in Yosemite the wave of international tourism is over, soon the park will be covered in snow and the roads will be closed. At the end of October in Yosemite there is a surprising break from the inhabitants of contemporary California.

As retirees move to the southern states where taxes are infinitely lower or non-existent and houses cost much less than in California, migrants take over, who are instead attracted to this state where there are still jobs that Californians do not want to do, and refugees who are placed by the state in California. And so on a hot weekend in late October in Yosemite groups of Afghan men hang around the restaurants, sneak into the lines for food. As at home, they move in packs, they do not wear the traditional clothes of their country but the Afghan version of Western ones, the colors do not match and the t-shirts have bright designs. And then there are Mexican families dressed in the fashion of Mexico City or Monterey, Indians with shawls from Rajasthan around their necks. They all look a bit sloppy and if I didn't know where I was I would think I was in another continent, e.g. in Asia. All this multi-ethnicism in a country that was born, grew and became the world's largest economic power on the immigration of those who escaped a life of hardship chasing the dream of a better life, should not surprise us, indeed it should be the norm. But it is not so. Against the backdrop of the degradation of the structures of Yosemite, this unusual window on the new population of Californians confirms the social metamorphoses of the United States. In the absence of a mechanism for homogenizing migrants, internal migrations are redrawing the ethnic-social composition of California without integration. Young Afghan refugees are unable to leave behind the customs and habits of their home, they are not Americans. Why? Because they most likely live in ethnic ghettos and do not feel accepted. Of course, even the Italians or Irish who landed in Boston in the 19th century went to live in the corresponding ghettos, but at that time America was in the process of being formed and immigrants were building it.

Who does this population vote for? But will they vote? Few understand the American political dynamic and even fewer have registered to vote.

In California, internal migrations erode the hard core of the Democratic Party and in doing so dilute its compactness while the flow of migrants does not reconstitute it because many, too many do not vote.

In the headquarters of the Democratic Party in San Francisco on Market Street a short distance from a colony of homeless people and victims of fentanyl this problem is visible. The few volunteers, including many women, are all white and elderly, there is a lack of multi-ethnicity and youth. Inside it seems that time has stopped at the end of the last century and that the volunteers have aged behind their stalls while around them the city and California changed. It's all a bit sad.