Cheerfulness is the message, Saturday in New York. If you ask how people feel you will be told: Happy. Relieved. Relax. Finally back to normal. And: safe. If there is one city that has had it with Donald Trump, it is its hometown.
The city is still dozing as late on Saturday morning, after four days of post-electoral stress, suddenly shouting from houses and flats, brownstones and housing projects, on streets and in parks. Within seconds, ten million people will know: it’s over.
Many New Yorkers go out to share the news with anyone who wants to hear it. People whoohoo ‘, cars honk, blare trumpets. An elderly woman who came out every day at 7 p.m. for months to applaud the nurses with cowbells is now being cheered on by passers-by herself. Everyone waves to everyone, some raise a fist in the air, on a fire escape a woman sitting in the sun cradles Celebration, the party song of Kool and the Gang. An elderly man walks by and says, “America is on its way back!”
New York isn’t the only city where spontaneous parties erupt on Saturday, when residents learn that Joe Biden is calculated to have won the US presidential election. Hundreds of thousands of Democrats also dance in the streets in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and dozens of other major cities. In Washington, thousands congregate around the White House, where the president returns at the end of the day under a bow and through a hedge of raised middle fingers after a round of golf in Virginia. But in New York it is slightly different, more than politics – it is almost personal.
“ He called New York a ghost town, ” says Emile Spiegel, who took her boyfriend to Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza, where the triumphal arch stands that marked the end of the American Civil War a century and a half ago (“ To the defenders of de Unie ‘, it says on the memorial). “Look around you,” she says, pointing to the people dancing. “Are these ghosts?”
Rocky
Bubbles spurt out of champagne bottles, a pair of brass instruments whips up the crowd. They play Hit The Road Jack on We Are The Champions and the tune of Rocky. Unlike Trump rallies, there are hardly any flags: one Biden / Harris flag, one rainbow flag and two American flags, and only a few protest signs, such as Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead – the New Yorkers mainly come to celebrate now, their cheerfulness is the message.
It is warm, it feels like spring in the fall and if you ask how people feel you will hear: Happy. Relieved. Relax. Finally back to normal. And: safe.
“It feels like I can finally breathe again,” says Cass (28). And Tyler Carter (31): “The whole idea that he’ll just be gone soon, that already gives so much air – he really got in the way, like a fat man you are standing with in a small elevator.”
On the way to the square is an elderly couple, fragile, such a couple that you used to meet more often, but not since the corona outbreak: they have literally disappeared from the streetscape. Today they are back. “Congratulations,” someone says to them, and the lady replies, “Congratulations to all of us,” and then waves to a car with someone honking behind the wheel. The song Fuck Donald Trump sounds from the window – a hit that you hear everywhere in American cities, especially today.
It’s not a day for long conversations. People don’t feel like evaluating the election, telling why they don’t think Biden is the ideal president, speculating about Trump’s surrender – they need all their attention for this moment. If you have waited four years, you will not immediately look ahead four years. “This is real,” someone says. At least for now. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. ‘
If there’s one city that’s had it all with Donald Trump, it’s his hometown, or at least large swaths of it – there are neighborhoods that did vote for him, too, like Staten Island and the old Irish and Italian neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens. After the city was badly hit by the coronavirus, New York almost came to a halt due to a partial lockdown, on top of which was added to the Black Lives Matter protests, which turned into riots for a few days.
Trump moved to Florida and never returned, portraying the city as a Democratic drain, an “anarchist district,” where rioters and criminals would have free rein. He threatened to turn off the money supply at a time when the city, which has been filling America’s federal cash for years, desperately needs that support. ‘New York is going to hell. Vote Trump! ” He tweeted last month.
Face mask
“We are now showing that we are still there,” says Chris Mirigliani, 36, at the triumphal arch in Brooklyn. ‘This city was the epicenter of the pandemic, and look around you: everyone wears a mask, everyone does what has to be done in order to be able to return to the normal situation. Trump’s departure also helps with that. ‘
Why he celebrates? Because, first of all, decency is restored. There are a million other things to be done, but this is the beginning. And, most importantly, America is a place for everyone, an idea that has been seriously compromised in the last four years. There is no better place to celebrate that recovery than New York, where the whole world comes together. ‘
“We’ve seen the onset of fascism, racism, totalitarianism, and all those isms have now been rejected,” says Emile Spiegel. ‘These are all reasons to celebrate now. I am Jewish. First thing I did when I heard it this morning: I called my great-aunt. She was so happy – she and my grandparents fled Europe just before World War II. She now saw something happening here from which she fled at the time. We all feel a lot safer today. ‘
A Trump voter also comes out shaking his head. ‘They don’t know what they are cheering for. They do not know what they have brought about them. Four years of communism. It’s all because of education. ‘
At Mexican restaurant Mezcal’s Eric ‘the American‘, as he calls himself, with a big rattle. Every time a car honks it, it turns it around – after which all the customers on the outside terrace shout along. “What I feel is total relaxation,” he says. ‘I have waited four years for this day. That I no longer have to fear what he’s going to say next. Whether that affected me personally? Of course I took it personally. Every insult is personal, isn’t it? ‘ He spins with his ratchet. ‘For all the noise he made, we have to make noise now. We have four years to erase. ‘
Biden: ‘Trump voters, let’s give each other a chance. We are not enemies
Joe Biden, the president-to-be of the United States, addressed the 70 million voters who did not vote for him on Saturday evening in his victory speech. ‘I understand the disappointment, I also lost a number of times. But let’s give each other a chance. It’s time to see and hear each other again. We are not enemies, we are Americans. ‘
Trump, the master of the conflict, is going down in his own wrath
Trump’s presidency was a succession of abrupt decisions, furious Twitter attacks on his rivals, but also strong economic growth. Until the corona virus hit. In the end, many Americans turned out to be fed up with his anger.
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