NYC NOW - October 24, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

The New York Liberty celebrated their first-ever WNBA championship Thursday with a parade through the Canyon of Heroes in Manhattan. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service is warning of an increased wildfire risk across large parts of southern and central New Jersey. Plus, Indian Americans, the second-largest immigrant group in the U.S., are energized by Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy. WNYC’s Arun Venugopal reports that Harris, who is Black and Indian American, has sparked a surge in political activism within the community.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Thursday, October 24th. Here's the midday news from Veronica Del Valle. That's the New York Liberty's famous 40 and up dance team, the timeless torches. They were among those in the lineup for today's parades celebrating the WNBA champions. The Libs won their first ever league title earlier this week. The parade traveled up Broadway's Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan earlier today.

The team next heads to a ceremony at City Hall where they will be honored. And this evening, the team will host a championship celebration at their home court in Brooklyn, Barclays Center. The National Weather Service is warning people in New Jersey of an increased risk for wildfires today. A red flag warning remains in effect through six in the evening in a large, swaths of South and Central Jersey. Those warnings mean warm temperatures, very low humidity, and strong winds are all in the forecast. Together, those factors make for extreme fire risk. The risk also remains very high in parts of the state without the red flag warning. All fires in wooded areas of New Jersey are banned unless they're in an elevated stove

using only propane, gas, or electricity. No charcoal fires are allowed. And remember, plenty of streets in Lower Manhattan are still closed because of the Liberty Tick or Tate Parade. The city is warning people against driving in the area, and those should expect plenty of traffic. As for the weather, 64 and bright, perfect parade weather. Today, gusty and 66. Stay close. There's more after the break. NYC. Indian Americans are the second-lawful.

largest immigrant group in the country, and the community has been electrified by the presence of one of their own at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket. WNYC's Arun Vanegupal says the presidential candidacy of Kamala Harris, who is black and Indian American, has been met with a surge of political activism. All right, objectively speaking, this has been an eventful election year. Even more so, I can imagine for someone who is Indian American. Yeah, I could say that with some confidence as well. I mean, we've seen a bunch of Indian Americans who've been just thrust into public view or who've ascended to the very top of the political order on both sides of the aisle, right? I mean, you've got Kamala Harris, of course, but Republicans like Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramoswamy,

and of course Ushah Vance, who is the wife of J.D. Vance, but really sold their story, their marriage, her immigrant family's narrative up there from the stage at the Republican National Convention a couple months ago. And you have to remember, this is a community that's just one and a half percent of the U.S. population. And for much of my life, at least, you know, we were pretty invisible in political terms. Now we're talking about this disproportionate amount of political representation. It wasn't entirely clear with all these choices presented to Indian Americans who the community would embrace, but now we know. And we know that because of data, I assume.

so talk to us about the data. Yeah, I mean, so the Indian American community, the data shows, is behind Harris by a very big margin. There was a report in late September released by AAPI data and Asian and Pacific Islander American vote. And they found that 69% of Indian American registered voters nationwide support Harris, while just 25% of voters. in the community support Donald Trump. 76% of respondents, again, these are Indian Americans, said they had a somewhat or very favorable impression of Harris, which is way stronger than any other Asian subgroup who respond to the survey.

Meanwhile, the community has very negative views of Trump, with 63% expressing a somewhat or very unfavorable impression of him. I'd like to add the response from the community to the Biden candidacy was lukewarm when we're going back a few months ago. And it really shot up once Harris became the candidate. Arun, I'm curious how this enthusiasm translates IRL. Yeah, well, for one, it means, you know, all these different events that have been happening or are going to be happening soon featuring Indian American, South Asians.

A lot of them are celebrities who are kind of bringing their star power to this campaign. There was a South Asian Women for Harris event in July, featuring Mindy Kaling, among others. This coming Tuesday, actor Komail Nanjiani and top chef host Padma Lakshmi are taking part in this virtual comedy event called South Asians Stand Up for Harris. Others, they're happening, you know, physical events, virtual events, trying to get out the vote. But we're also seeing a surge in on-the-ground political activism. an activist by the name of Neha Diwan. She helps run South Asians for Harris. And she told me there are hundreds of people in the community who've been registering voters here in the Tri-State area, calling voters in swing states, actually driving out to places like Pennsylvania or New Hampshire, all in order to win over potential voters.

Well, that's on the Democratic side. You did mention Usha Vance, who is the wife of J.D. Vance, the vice presidential candidate. So let's talk about what you heard from Trump supporters. Yeah, I mean, the points I heard are similar to mainstream conservative talking points. You know, Indian American Trump supporters told me they're upset about illegal immigrants and high inflation. You know, they think Trump is going to tackle those issues. One supporter of respect to me is a businessman by the name of Hamith Butt, who runs the Asian American Republican Coalition out of New Jersey. He participated in the India Day parade in Manhattan in August.

He stood on afloat next to a cardboard cut out of Trump. And he told me that, you know, although there was a lot of excitement after the Republican convention about Ushah Vans, he didn't really hear a lot more after that when it came to her. So it's not clear whether she really did drive any sort of engagement from this community. And then data from polls sort of suggests that there's a very strong negative feeling, amongst members of the community towards JD Vance, strong net negative. So if there was any sort of positive feelings that they had about Ushah Vance, it didn't really amount to anything regarding the ticket itself. Arun, I can imagine with the heightened profile of people like

Kamala Harris and Ushah Vance, there have been some negative consequences for people in the Indian American community, though, right? Yeah. I mean, there's just some recent findings about sort of like the dark side of all this. The group Stop AAPI Hate just released a report this past week noting alarmingly high levels of hate aimed online at members of the Indian and South Asian communities. The authors of this report, they've been monitoring what are called domestic violent extremist spaces, and they found a spike in certain kinds of words and phrases online. You know, we won't kind of repeat those slurs, but these are, you know,

very harmful, racist, xenophobic slurs aimed at Indians specifically. And they say the problem coincides with the political ascendance of Kamala Harris and Usha Vans. So this is the flip side of political relevance, at least for this particular community. Rune, thank you so much for all of your reporting on this. We appreciate it. Thanks, Tiffany. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day. for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

See you this evening.