Marinette

Marinette, Wisconsin

Getting from Chicago to Marinette, a quiet town on the shores of Lake Michigan on the border between Wisconsin and Michigan, means crossing immense corn fields and large farms, a typical Midwestern agricultural landscape even though we are far north and east of the great prairies. Paradoxically, climate change has made this land warmer and more fertile; once upon a time, growing corn at this latitude was difficult. And in fact, it is the second week of October and along the lake it still feels like summer.

As I drive on a ribbon of asphalt that runs like scissors along the yellow canvas of fields and hills, colourful signs promoting Trump and Vance welcome me. They can be bought almost everywhere in the United States before the elections, the party even sends them to those who do not want to pay the few dollars of the retail price. They sell them in different sizes but the colours of the Republican ones are always the same, blue, white and red, the colours of the American flag. People plant them in front of their homes, not everyone does it, of course, only the bravest ones because nowadays openly declaring who you vote for it is often risky.

This is a nation that is scared, not because of the massacres in schools or shopping malls, but because of the polarization between Democrats and Republicans that can assume worrying aspects, especially in the swing states. A bit like Covid and vaccines when between those who were in favour of the former and those who were against it, an impossible canyon has been dug, a canyon that cannot be crossed.

In 2016, Trump provoked the same reaction, his election and his presidency were a social earthquake that split families and communities. The result was tragic, relatives and friends stopped seeing each other; when once during the traditional Thanksgiving meal, on Thanksgiving Day, people would discuss politics passionately and end up arguing about family issues, now there are many empty chairs around the tables.

All this explains why most people are afraid to talk about politics and only those who are not afraid of the reactions expose themselves, for example many farmers in Wisconsin. And so along the corn and hay fields of the farms the signs in favour of Trump and Vance seem like new political crops growing along the sides of the road. The Democrats have placed some billboards advertising Harris that say she is on the side of the workers. But they are nothing amid the flowering of pro-Republican blossoming, Wisconsin is a swing state and this part of the state is decidedly red.

Marinette is also a red stronghold, the waiter at the bar where we eat fish and chips tells me. When I ask him what he thinks of the elections he tells me that the situation is crazy, but he doesn't commit himself. As I experienced in the Bronx ten days ago, in the bars they don't talk about politics or religion. Marinette is a working-class town and also a vacation spot. In the harbour there are still several boats that will soon be pulled ashore because part of the lake freezes here in the winter. But all along the West Coast there are factories and terminals to load the minerals that come from the mines in the interior, mainly from Minnesota, and the most important is iron and the Taconite that comes from it. And just as the miners of the Iron Range of Minnesota stopped voting Democrat because they felt betrayed by Obama, so the workers in the factories and terminals along Lake Michigan did the same for the same reasons.

The local population of the lake lives off these industries and summer tourism, explains the owner of an antique shop. He is an elderly gentleman, ex-military, he doesn't tell me where he served but it's likely that he went to Vietnam. We start chatting, it's a very quiet mid-week afternoon, the town is empty and his shop is empty too. And so we end up talking about politics.

“This is a divided nation, where we don't talk about politics because everyone is afraid of the reactions of others. A friend of mine had a restaurant and in 2016 he sided with Trump, his customers were almost all Democrats and he stopped going to his restaurant. He had to close. That's why nobody talks about elections in the bars." He concludes.

I encourage him to explain to me what happened, why does this deep division exist? And he answers me and gets excited, I have the clear impression that he really wants to talk and that he can finally do it because I am a foreigner.

“It was Obama who created the first social divide, between blacks and whites who live next to each other. A president who had promised to cement integration and promote multi-ethnic groups ended up fomenting divisions. His was a discriminatory policy, but not openly in favour of blacks or against whites, his was a policy in favour of migrants because he wanted the vote of Latinos, Asians, anyone who arrived in this country. But that's not all, during Obama the social inequalities of Americans grew, blacks became impoverished like whites, while the rich, including the financiers of the Democratic Party and celebrities, benefited from Obama's policies. Blacks suffered more than whites because they felt abandoned by the first black president. I have many black friends who would never vote for the Democratic Party because of this. And they are right.”

While I chat with the owner of the antique shop in Marinette, Obama makes a surprise appearance in support of Kamala Harris in Pittsburgh, in another swing state, Pennsylvania, where he openly urges black “brothers” not to be sexist and to vote for Harris, he does it in the same tone with which the school principal orders the students to stop arguing during recess. An attitude that has raised great criticism among blacks, especially in swing states, including Michigan, a few miles from Marinette.

In 2020, in Michigan black men were 5 percent of voters and 88 percent voted for Joe Biden, many wondered why in Pittsburgh Obama admonished them and told them not to be sexist, many took it as an insult and others felt cornered, why exhort blacks and ignore whites?

Obama’s speech, says a distinguished gentleman sitting at the counter next to me in a diner in Duluth, Bob Dylan’s hometown, Minnesota, is strategic, he wants to create the conditions to attribute Harris’s eventual loss to the black male vote. But it won’t be like that, blacks traditionally go to the polls with their women, mothers, wives, daughters, they are not sexist as Obama claims but are always used as scapegoats. What he should do, instead, is send a message of hope not criticism, but Harris is weak among blacks because no one knows her and she has never done anything for them and she is weak for the same reasons among working-class whites.

“I remind you,” my interlocutor concludes, “that Jesse Jackson, the man who did more than anyone else to make Obama win, said that Obama’s mistake was to give sermons to blacks looking down on them, criticizing them, and I would add as if he were white. Jackson’s message has been lost, but today we realize that it was right.”

10 October