By Yvette Clarke | New York Amsterdam News | Word In Black
(WIB) – As we approach this upcoming election, we must examine the threat that artificial intelligence (AI) will have to our ability to participate in a free and fair election, and the ramifications of another four years under Trump, with the implementation of Project 2025.
For years, I’ve stood at the forefront of Congress’s fight to regulate AI, and the many technologies born from advancements in this space. I have been raising concerns with my colleagues in Congress and emphasizing that without appropriate safeguards in place for AI, we risk facing dire consequences such as the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation.
When Elon Musk shared a deepfake video of the vice president, I knew this problem was a long time coming. Earlier in the year, President Biden’s voice was cloned using AI to send a fake robocall to thousands of voters in New Hampshire. This is particularly significant for communities of color across the country, including families in New York’s 9th District in Brooklyn.
A recent report showed at least 40 million Americans might be regularly targeted and fed disinformation in Black online spaces by a host of sources throughout social media, fueling false information around the election. In fact, the past few election cycles have seen misinformation weaponized and targeted at communities of color by racist and antidemocratic actors who seek to intimidate voters of color and use lies to discourage Black people from participating in the democratic process. Unfortunately, far more than our ability to responsibly regulate AI is at risk this November. The truth is far more terrifying.
The truth is that our freedoms are at stake.
If elected, Trump and his gang will enact Project 2025 — a 900-page manifesto published by the Heritage Foundation as a guide to implement their far-right, radical policies nationwide, and uproot the very foundation our American values and principles are built upon.
As a daughter of Jamaican immigrants, part of my lived experience was learning to understand and appreciate my parents’ journey to their American dream. Brooklyn, including the 9th District, is a portal that is representative of the world’s cultures and peoples, and many of my constituents also share those experiences. As a Caribbean American, I understand their origin stories and how valuable becoming citizens of this great nation is to everyone — particularly those I represent.
The Caribbean community has a long history with the United States. The history of Caribbean people dates back as far as slavery in this country. As time passed, enslaved people brought from Barbados formed a substantial portion of the Black population in Virginia, particularly in the Tidewater area around the Chesapeake Bay.
In the centuries that followed, people from the nations of Haiti, Jamaica, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, and more arrived in this nation, becoming doctors, caretakers, Oscar-winning actors like Sidney Poitier, activist-musicians like Harry Belafonte, and even legendary politicians like my idol, Shirley Chisholm. Caribbean culture was molded into this great American mosaic, adding different foods, music, and a stubborn sense of self-determination.
Immigration is the centerpiece of the former president’s campaign to retake the White House, and if he wins a second term in November, he has pledged to embark on the biggest deportation program in U.S. history. Trump has suggested he would deputize local police officers to identify suspects and make arrests, and said that they would be granted “immunity.” In an interview with Time magazine earlier this year, he bragged about the speed at which he would deport tens of millions. A mass deportation plan on this scale is pure horror with no consideration of humanitarian concerns or family separations. Project 2025 even calls for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to be allowed to carry out “civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the United States, without warrant where appropriate.”
“t’s not difficult to imagine what kind of communities they would target first, especially considering that the former president referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole” countries — legitimizing the targeting of people of the African diaspora, and furthering his agenda to restrict immigration policy in a potential second term.
Project 2025 seeks to destroy Temporary Protected Status (TPS), cutting more than 850,000 individuals from the program and repealing all active TPS designations. This is more than troubling at a time when my colleagues and I in the Haiti Caucus have been continuing to beat the drum for expanding the TPS designation for our Haitian brothers and sisters as the island nation of Haiti has descended into chaos from political instability, natural disasters, and gang violence. Project 2025 would treat immigration as a threat to the nation, rather than the great benefit it has always proven to be.
Now more than ever, we must protect the great American mosaic we have worked so diligently to craft. We came here not to create division, fuel xenophobia, or strengthen extremism, but to spread one-love, build unity, and have the opportunity to reach our highest aspirations. We must fight on. There is no future for the Caribbean community in Project 2025. It is time for us to use our inalienable rights as Caribbean Americans, do our civic duty, and head to the ballot box — because we are not going back.
Yvette Diane Clarke has been the U.S. representative for New York’s 9th congressional district since 2013.
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