Outside The Focus Of Major Parties, Black Pittsburghers Vow To Get Out The Vote

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Tanisha Long founded an unofficial Black Lives Matters chapter in Pittsburgh. She is actively campaigning for Joe Biden to win Pennsylvania, a key swing state in the election.

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«I just can’t have that happen again, it’s really stressing me out,» she says.

Donald Trump famously lost the popular vote in 2016 by over 2.8 million votes but secured a victory in the electoral college by winning razor thin margins in key swing states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania. Both the Trump and Biden campaigns are focused on these states, looking to get support from voters who either sat out 2016 or might be persuaded to vote for the other side. In Pennsylvania, that has meant a disproportionate interest in white suburban voters. Trump won them over by larger margins than expected in 2016, including just outside Pittsburgh in Washington County.

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Sheridan Newsome, 21, walks by a mural in Pittsburgh’s Homewood neighborhood. Despite receiving the consistent support of Black communities, many voters here say Democratic leaders have largely failed to effectively address enduring problems like police violence, discrimination and income inequality that have disproportionately hurt Black residents in Pittsburgh.

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Hip-hop artist Jasiri X is working to help people vote with a new nonprofit he helped create called 1Hood Power.

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«What I didn’t see in 2016 was an investment in Black-led organizations to actually speak to Black people, to have those important conversations, to get Black people to the polls,» he says. «For voting, it takes a personal touch.»

Young and Jasiri X both plan to vote for Biden, though they aren’t enthusiastic about him or his running mate, Kamala Harris.

Simply put, Young believes his life depends on Biden defeating Trump in November. And it’s up to white voters to get it done.

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«We talk about how Black women, Black voters, Latino voters will decide it. No. White people will decide the election,» he says. «If he wins again, it’s not because we weren’t engaged. It’s not because we didn’t come out. It’s because white people came out and ignored the four years of evidence of Donald Trump being an unrepentant racist and a misogynist and a terrible businessman.»

‘A fighting chance’

Lisa Cunningham, 58, has lived in the Hill District, one of Pittsburgh’s historically Black neighborhoods, for about 45 years. She’s worried about a lot of the things Young and Jasiri X identified as issues that might lead people to be reluctant to vote for Democrats, or to vote at all.

«Jobs, fairness, economic disparities, racism. You have people sitting on top of us up there and they’re looking down on us down here,» Cunningham says, gesturing to the sky scrapers downtown. But her enthusiasm for Biden — and for voting — remains strong.

«I adore him,» she says about Biden, «I know he will give us equality and he will give us a fighting chance.»

Cunningham says she’d rather risk catching the coronavirus to be able to cast her ballot in person than trust mail-in voting, even though her daughter had COVID-19.

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Pennsylvania State House Rep. Summer Lee was first Black woman from western Pennsylvania elected to the Pennsylvania state house.

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United States Steel’s Edgar Thomson Plant seen in Braddock, Pa., on Sept. 12. Rep. Lee represents this area, which still has an active steel mill.

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Republican Lenny McCallister says he could not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 because of his Christian faith. But he also can’t imagine ever voting for Biden.

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William Allen walks by a mural in the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

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William Allen walks by a mural in the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

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As one of few active Black Republicans in Pittsburgh, Lenny admits that the party has a problem embracing diversity.

«There’s not a lot of Republicans that try to connect to different and diverse portions of the nation. I think that when we say ‘we love America,’ we love America in the sense that we love what we’re familiar with. We don’t love Damon Young or Summer Lee when they disagree with us,» he says.

And McCallister is troubled by many of the same problems facing his city, his community and his nation as Young and Lee: racial health disparities, discrimination and police violence.

«Damon Young is never going to be my enemy. Summer Lee, as a hardcore, left-leaning Democrat is never going to be my enemy,» he says.

Ariel Worthy, government and accountability reporter at WESA, contributed to this story.