Election Day, November 4, 2008. (Photo: FlickrCC/Sergiocapitano)
On Election Day, the Feet In 2 Worlds team spread out to polling places in immigrant and ethnic neighborhoods across the U.S. to report on how foreign-born voters experienced this historic day.
Our contributors covered voting in battleground states Florida and New Hampshire, as well as Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York:
- Macollvie Jean-Francois reported on Haitian-Americans and other voters in South Florida. She talked to those who voted before Tuesday and then covered polling sites in the morning and in the afternoon.
- Aswini Anburajan went to Harlem in the morning: she met a man in his fifties voting for the first time, a woman who marched in Selma and a Senegalese immigrant, a Puerto Rican couple, and a Trinidadian immigrant. She then went by Union Square to record the palpable excitement in lower Manhattan, before heading to Jackson Heights, Queens. There she found a Babel tower of electoral interest, complaints of election law violations, and had an extraordinary sidewalk conversation with two Bangladeshis and an Argentinean outside the polls. She also went on the air on PRI’s The World and sent us audio interviews with voters.
- Eduardo A. de Oliveira reported from New Hampshire, where he talked to a Vietnamese voter, and also found time to interview Brazilians in Massachusetts. He also appeared on WNYC, New York Public Radio.
- Martina Guzman talked to Latino families who came out to vote in Southwest Detroit, met an African American man who had tried to vote for the first time in Louisiana in 1955, and in the evening she marveled at the predominantly black city’s raucous celebration of Barack Obama’s victory.
- Suman Raghunathan reported on immigrants having trouble voting in Astoria, Queens, and then met Filipino, Egyptian and Indian voters at a firehouse in Jersey City, New Jersey.
- Yan Tai reported on high levels of turnout among first-time and immigrant voters in Chinatown and on an Asian American group’s complaints about barriers to immigrant voting.
- Pilar Marrero reported from Latino neighborhoods in Chicago, where residents were excited with the possibility of a fellow Chicagoan being elected president.
- Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska talked to Polish voters in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who also came out in big numbers.
- John Rudolph wrapped it all up with news analysis of Obama’s place in history.
