Women aim to S.W.A.T. away Trump
STAMFORD, Connecticut: Donald Trump says suburban women will reelect him president, but in Connecticut female voters calling themselves The S.W.A.T. Team are campaigning against his efforts to court the crucial voting bloc. Suburban Women Against Trump was formed in early August in response to the US leader claiming that Democratic opponent Joe Biden would “destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream” with low-cost housing.
“I was just appalled by how he was trying to paint this picture of suburban women falling into his camp and being as racist as he is,” co-founder Brook Manewal tells AFP at a S.W.A.T. get-together. “He paints us as afraid of losing our white picket fences, perfect little houses and perfect yards and I don’t think that’s the people I have run into at all.”
The 43-year-old lawyer sent a late-night text message to friend and fellow Stamford resident Shira Tarantino suggesting they form an organization aimed at persuading suburban women to vote for Biden. S.W.A.T. was born as a small Facebook group. It quickly spread by word of mouth and on social media
and now has 9,000 members across 35 states, according to Manewal, a lawyer and mother of four. The women call voters on the phone daily, mail votingreminder postcards, raise funds for Biden’s campaign, post information online and were organizing a march yesterday in Stamford. They are also sending 10,000 copies of a letter to the White House telling Trump: “You do NOT know us, you do NOT speak for us, and you do NOT represent the type of leader we respect.”
‘Please like me’
At Wednesday’s event, the activists made posters for yesterday’s march that said “We won’t go back” and “Back off my body,” a reference to Trump’s claim that the Supreme Court may overturn abortion laws. Unsurprisingly, the women vote overwhelmingly Democratic but they have been able to pick up a few traditional Republican supporters, although they say that is not their focus. “I don’t think that we are necessarily here to change the minds of people whose minds are already made up,” says 49-year-old Tarantino, who has two children. “I think what we are here to do is to get people out to vote who don’t normally come out to vote,” adds the non-profit executive.
White women, including those living in suburbs, played a significant role in Trump’s shock election win over Hillary Clinton in 2016. According to the Pew Research Center, 47 percent of white women voted for Trump, compared with 45 percent for Clinton. Among white women without college degrees, some
61 percent voted for Trump compared to just 34 percent for Clinton.
The votes were pivotal in swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which he won by only 44,000 votes, and could be key again this time. On Aug 12, Trump tweeted that the “suburban housewife will be voting for me” on Nov 3. But at a rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, he sounded less sure. “Suburban women, will you please like me? I saved your damn neighborhood, okay?” he told the crowd. —AFP