DEARBORN, Michigan – A light wind rustled autumn leaves on the tree-lined streets in the inner-ring of Detroit’s suburbs, where single-family homes are framed by short driveways, neat lawns and inviting entryways.
The suburban idyll does not look like a frontline, but it is indeed a highly contested battle zone in the trenches of this presidential election; and part of a community that is the nation’s largest Arab majority city. It is here where campaign workers supporting Kamala Harris are deploying to try to shore up voters. And Trump is set to make a campaign stop in Dearborn today according to AP, which Harris has so far neglected to do.
Both candidates are vying for a swath of an estimated 200,000 registered Arab American voters in Michigan, many of whom are expressing their intention not to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because they see her as an extension of President Joe Biden’s policy toward Israel. Given that the margin of victory here is projected to be less than 50,000, the Arab vote, which swung for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, could be a deciding factor on November 5 in the race for Michigan and its 15 electoral college votes.
Saying they will not vote for Harris does not mean these Arab-Americans will vote for Trump. Some might, and Trump’s planned appearance is designed to make headway in a city that Biden won in 2020 by a 3-1 margin.
However, not all Arab Americans will be so easily swayed by Trump. Many remember his 2017 travel ban on Muslim majority countries and his call for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the country. They are also aware of the Trump administration’s close affinity with the hard right in Israel, and his campaign promise that as president he would “let Israel finish the job.” Most Arab American voters say they are staying uncommitted or throwing their support behind a third party like Jill Stein’s Green Party.
These Arab American voters simply do not feel heard on their opposition to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon which for them is not foreign policy, but local news that lands on the homefront. Since Hamas’ October 7th terror attack on Israel killed 1,200 people and 250 hostages were taken, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has presided over a relentless and punishing campaign against the Iranian-backed force in Gaza and then into Lebanon against its ally, Hezbollah, which had been carrying out cross-border missile attacks. Israel, with U.S. military support, has ignored international warnings against what is seen as a form of collective punishment that has resulted in the killing of more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the majority of whom are women and children. In Lebanon, Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes killed more than 2,000 mostly in southern Lebanon.
Michigan is home to a large number of people from the Arab world, and with Dearborn as the heart of the Arab and Muslim community, there is a hardening belief that the Biden-Harris administration has done nothing to stop the indiscriminate killing of civilians. The war hits close to home for these Arab Americans, many of whom are Lebanese and Palestinian, with some families even holding funeral services here in Dearborn after losing loved ones to Israeli airstrikes.
Against that complex and emotional backdrop of war and all the layers of history that lies behind it, the Harris campaign has recently reached out to this Arab community and not a minute too late. Canvassers here find themselves stressing that Harris has called for a ceasefire since August and has publicly supported the right of Palestinians to self-determination in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Trump has never voiced support for a ceasefire or a Palestinian state.
Harris walks a fine line, always stressing Israel’s right to self-defense when talking about Palestinian self-determination and always demanding the Israeli hostages to be returned home while recognizing the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. It is a noble approach, but Harris’ attempts at balance have not resonated here. The reflexive opposition among Arab voters makes it hard not to suspect misinformation and disinformation campaigns working against her.
In the last few weeks, the Harris campaign has stepped up its canvassing in these Arab neighborhoods and this week they pulled together an inter-faith approach by inviting a priest, an imam and a rabbi to their newly opened campaign office in Dearborn to discuss how to navigate the complexity of the terrain, and called for canvassers of all faiths to join them. On Tuesday afternoon, the effort got underway in Dearborn Heights.
Mika’il Stewart Saadiq, Imam of the Al Wali Muhammad Mosque in the neighboring city of Hamtramck, led the way in the neighborhood, followed by Rabbi Ariana Silverman, head of Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue in Detroit, and Associate Pastor Dale Milford of the Nardin Park United Methodist Church in Dearborn.
Before they set out, these faith leaders gathered in the campaign office and reflected on their mission with a group of about 20 volunteers. Saadiq opened with a parable that compared this election to passengers on a big ship. Below deck, he said, there are some hard working people pulling the oars and growing thirsty. Above deck are more comfortable quarters where the drinking water is stored. One of the below-deck passengers said, “I know, let’s drill a hole in the bottom of the boat and we will have all the water we need.”
Saadiq explained, “So that’s it. There are some people who seem willing to sink us all, and we have to admonish them and push back and show them we are better than that.”
One of the canvassers helping out, Haitham Wahab, a Lebanese American who came from New York to help out, waded into the conversation, saying that among Arab voters like himself, “There is a deep well of pain, and it really must be acknowledged. I see our role as really listening.”
He added, “In a world that is used to Zoom and robocalls, there is nothing more valuable and more humble than simply knocking on a door and asking to talk with someone.”
And so that is what they set out to do in the neighborhoods, knocking on doors and handing out fliers.
Saadiq, who organized 25 imams to endorse Harris, is a well known and trusted figure in the metro Detroit area, where he has long fought for social justice and served as a chaplain for the Detroit Police. He knocked on doors with confidence.
At one driveway he approached a woman doing yard work, announcing, “Hello, this is Imam Mika’il from the Harris campaign… You have an imam, a priest and a rabbi here to see you. Seriously!”
The woman, who was wielding a leaf blower and wearing a t-shirt that read “I’m the boss,” began chuckling at what sounded like the opening line of a joke, and she listened to the pitch. She told them she was still undecided, but she took the flier and folded it into her back pocket.
At a recent rally this week in the university town of Ann Arbor, Harris was set to speak before a lively and devoted crowd from a demographic that is safely in her front pocket.
One of the speakers who introduced her was Assad Turfe, Deputy Executive in Wayne County, the highest ranking Arab political leader in the state and one of the only Arab American leaders who has publicly endorsed Harris, opened with this line: “Over the next few days, Michigan is going to decide this race.”
Then, he lowered his voice and leaned in, speaking past the college campus crowd and reaching out to his fellow Arab American voters: “We are mourning loved ones who have died in Gaza and Lebanon. We are yearning for a president who hears us and who will understand our pain… Kamala Harris, without a doubt, is that leader!”
Not everyone in the crowd was convinced. Just after he left the stage, a small group of protesters gathered on the left side of the stage and as Harris entered they began heckling.
The protesters, including women wearing Islamic chador and men with Palestinian keffiyeh, began chanting: “Israel bombs, Kamala pays. How many kids have you killed today?!”
And so it goes with this key swing state still twisting in the wind, and the Harris campaign grinding away and fully aware of the stakes here in Michigan.
With less than a week before election day, Harris and Trump are in a virtual tie among Arab American voters nationally, according to a poll released in October by the Arab American Institute, leaving the vice president 18 points behind Biden’s level of support in 2020.
Arab Americans have leaned Democratic for decades, according to James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, which has polled Arab Americans since the 1990s. The reason for this shift, he explained in a press conference in Dearborn this week, is due to Harris’ failure to hear Arab American voters and speak directly to their concerns. Despite his admonition, Zogby gathered with other prominent Arab American leaders in Dearborn and joined those who are reluctantly turning their support to Harris.
Back in Dearborn at the Qahwah House, a well known Arab coffee shop, debate was simmering among the rich smells of dark roast Arabic coffee and cardamom, ginger and cinnamon. Seated at a back table in the corner reading the Economist was Saeed Khan, an associate professor of Near East Studies at Wayne State University.
Khan said, “The Harris campaign was late to realize how deep the pain is here for people who have lost their extended families in southern Lebanon and in Gaza. Harris has been cautious about this. Her abundance of caution, trying to maintain consistency with Biden and his policies, could cost her this election.”
The post How Arab Americans and Muslims in Michigan could swing the 2024 presidential election appeared first on The GroundTruth Project.
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