SAGINAW,
Mich. (AP) — It was difficult to celebrate America in Saginaw this
year. The deadly coronavirus had torn through the county. Unemployment
had surged five-fold. Weeks of protest over racial inequality left many
debating what should be hallowed and what must be changed.
The July Fourth fireworks display was cancelled, since there was no venue that felt safe from the sickness.
The
dark skies over this mid-Michigan city were a plaintive marker of a
nation utterly disrupted in a matter of months. Americans are aiming
their anger at each other, talking past each other, invoking race, class
and culture. They cannot even agree on the need to wear a mask to protect against a virus that has killed more than 130,000 Americans.
The
discord comes as the country hurtles toward a convulsive presidential
election. President Donald Trump portrays himself as a disrupter, with
an agenda that is rooted in nationalism and roils racial divisions; his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, calls for a national reset to something resembling normal.
“It’s never been this divided,” says Tom Roy, vice chair of Saginaw’s Republicans.
It
is in places like Saginaw County, Michigan, which narrowly flipped from
voting for President Barack Obama to voting for Trump, where clarity
about America’s future is likely to come. The political fallout from the
pandemic, recession and protests is unfolding, leaving a striking
degree of uncertainty just four months from Election Day.
Will younger voters turn out?
Will older voters seek change? Will the suburbs once again provide the pivot points in the country’s partisan divide?
The
election will provide answers to all these questions, but not
necessarily to the central issue of American life in the year 2020: Can
the United States pull itself together?
The
country is beset by “parties who see each other as ‘the other’ instead
of collaborators in a democracy,” says historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
“A
crisis allows you, if you’ve got the leadership, to unite the nation.
What’s needed — and we’ve seen this for a while — is a national
direction,” she said.
___
Back
in 1968, Saginaw was nearly twice as large as the 48,115 people who now
call it home. General Motors alone operated at least eight plants in
the city and surrounding county, providing middle-class jobs that drew
African Americans from the Deep South. The Saginaw River slashes a
diagonal line through the city and became a dividing line between Black
residents on the east side and white residents on the west.
As
GM stumbled and there were layoffs and closures — manufacturing jobs
dropped by 50% in the last 30 years. Trump pledged an industrial
renaissance, but the area’s 20.7% unemployment is more than four times
higher than the day he was elected.
Until
February, Dave Adams was athletic director at Swan Valley High School, a
suburban school. Trump’s election changed him and, at 47, he left his
job to help turn out voters for the Democrats.
“You
don’t want to look back and say woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Adams says.
“I always thought that the president should be a role model. The current
president is so far from it, for me, that it blows my mind.”
Few Americans think Trump is telling the truth or cares about them, according to April polling by AP-NORC. Even Republicans are more likely to describe Trump as divisive than unifying.
But they still overwhelmingly approve of the job he’s doing and many
believe a Democratic president would be worse for the country.
The
pandemic gave new urgency to having a trustworthy president. It also
upended Adams’ own plans. His new job — canvassing neighborhoods — has
become a health risk. The recession meant schools might not hire
teachers, so he took a second job this month as a custodian to preserve
his pension.
“I’ll take what I can get,” he said.
___
Hattie
Norwood doesn’t remember a time when Saginaw was a growing middle-class
haven. At just 31, she’s already witnessing the second major recession
of her adult life. She sees Saginaw’s problems — crime, poverty,
struggling schools, food deserts — as entrenched.
The
mother of four remembers well the protests that erupted eight years ago
when Saginaw police officers fatally shot at Milton Hall, a Black
homeless man who was waving a pocket knife, 47 times. The officers never
faced charges.
But this moment has changed her.
The
pandemic caused the schools to close, depriving kids of the free meals
upon which they depended. So Norwood and eight strangers she connected
with online met in a Tim Hortons coffee shop on in March to devise a
plan to distribute food to families.
When
George Floyd, a Black man, died after a Minneapolis police officer
pinned him on the ground for nearly 8 minutes, she and others organized
the county’s first protest in response and later launched Saginaw’s own
Black Lives Matter chapter.
“I’ve gained my political grounding,” said Norwood, 31, a communications consultant.
Democrats
hope it’s part of a warm-up for November. Young, liberal voters have
been cool to Biden, a 77-year-old moderate, and a fight for racial
justice may be the thing that mobilizes these often elusive voters.
“I
am for doing whatever it takes to get Trump out of office.” Norwood
said. “When I leave this place, when I’m gone, there will be brown girls
after me and I just can’t fathom a world that continues in this way.”
__
Tom
Roy, who is white, sees a very different America. In his experience,
anyone who sacrifices can buy into the stock market and get ahead.
At
57, he thinks of himself as a Reagan Republican. He started playing the
stock market in the 1980s, but the profits really piled up years later
while working as a manager at a roller rink. He did well enough to buy a
Corvette (and six others since).
Trump
had planned to make Roy’s pocketbook politics the heart of this
campaign. But the closures caused by the pandemic and the
almost-overnight recession disrupted that plan. They also energized the
Republican base.
As
businesses started to reopen in June, so did the offices of the Saginaw
County Republicans — in time for riled up voters to come by, asking to
sign a petition to recall the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, for
her stay-at-home orders.
But there was a hitch in the recall effort: There was nothing to sign.
“People
on Facebook and social media had talked about recalling the governor,”
said Roy, a GOP candidate for town trustee who marvels at what he views
as evidence of pro-Trump energy. “We never had a document.”
___
There
are those in Saginaw who say maybe the United States isn’t being pulled
apart. Maybe it’s growing, even if uncomfortably so.
The Rev. Hurley Coleman, head of the World Outreach Campus Church, knows it’s a hard time to talk about hope.
Still,
the protests after Floyd’s death were the first time he’s seen Black
and white people march together in Saginaw for racial equality, he said.
It made him think this might be a moment of such upheaval that even
long-standing barriers are broken, divides disrupted.
“This
is one of those terrible growth moments where people of goodwill and
good thought can bring us to another level,” Coleman said. “When you
build on truth, anything is possible.”
___
Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.
