biden

After Joe Biden was pronounced president-elect of the United States in November, crowds of students and community residents gathered in the streets outside Columbia’s gates to celebrate. Now, with Biden officially inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States, local residents of Morningside Heights and West Harlem say they continue to look toward the future of Biden’s presidency with optimism.

Just after Election Day, I saw room for optimism. Republicans had gained seats in the House, limiting the Democrats’ power to jam through partisan legislation. Many of the newly-elected Republican representatives were moderate ones from diverse backgrounds: Among them were two of the first three Korean American women ever elected to Congress. Donald Trump was defeated, and Joe Biden—a candidate running on a promise to restore the soul of the nation—won.

Between September 2018 and May 2019, six migrant children died in Border Patrol custody. In July of that same year, the New York Times reported on horrendous conditions at a Border Patrol detention facility in Texas: overcrowding; unsanitary conditions; children forced to sleep on concrete floors; parentless babies being cared for by migrant teens; and heartbreaking stories of children hearing their family members’ voices on the phone for the first time in months. This September, a whistle-blower report alleged that multiple women in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Irwin County Detention Center—operated by LaSalle Corrections, a private company—were pressured into invasive surgeries without proper consent. As recently as October, the country learned that ICE had lost track of the parents of over 500 migrant children. Despite its short history, ICE has managed to amass a significant record of human rights violations. In addition to the abuses detailed above, sexual abuse, violence, and family separation run rampant within the agency.

As Joe Biden secures the 2020 election, the shift in power to the Democratic Party signals forthcoming change to higher education policy. Among other initiatives, Biden’s current higher education platform promises to reinstate broader Title IX protections and support lower-income students’ attendance of public four-year programs and community colleges.

When mainstream media outlets first declared President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over his incumbent opponent Donald Trump early last week, community members and University affiliates flooded the streets of Morningside Heights to celebrate his victory.  In the days following, students at Columbia have begun to reflect on Biden’s triumph with tempered enthusiasm, pointing to Biden’s carceral and foreign policy records as evidence of his disconnect with current activist movements and more progressive youth audiences.

Outside Columbia’s gates, hundreds of students and community residents cheered, honked, sang, and danced to celebrate the victory of the projected president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden. For many, it was the first presidential election they voted in.

While the world remains captivated by the now-famous fly that spotted Pence as the perfect matter of decay to feed on, I pose this question: Can we as Black and Indigenous families, whose lives depend upon policy change, truly expect to see legal justice, neighborhood development, and real community sustainability from either the Republican or Democratic presidential candidates? While close attention must be placed on the 2020 presidential election, our communities need change today. Our attention should be equally focused on opportunities for change at the federal, state, and local levels by electing leaders who prioritize full participatory policymaking, a foundation for social and economic sustainability for communities such as Harlem and the greater New York City, and will not continue to promote performative change without real solutions.

Because the upcoming presidential election this year will play a defining role in America’s political future, it’s essential to understand both the election system and the structure of the Electoral College. The American election process is complex, and its intricacies may be unfamiliar to international students who are better versed in the political processes of their home countries.

While academics often must push for their research to be publicized by news outlets, criticisms of mainstream media and the growth of informal social platforms have broadened the opportunities for academics to enter public discourse on current issues. University professors have accumulated upwards of 3 million followers on platforms such as Twitter—where their controversial ideas garner political attention and even become virally distributed.