In a gray hoodie pulled low over his face and a glass of red wine in front of him, Carl Schwartz, 24, sits at his kitchen table. Mustard chairs squeak under wooden linoleum; a plethora of vinyl records line a small coffee table next to him.
In the background stands a record player between two considerably large speakers. He sips his wine, while nervously joking about hating the sound of his voice played back to him, I assure him it wouldn’t be.
Schwartz is a 24-year-old Brooklyn transplant from Richmond, Virginia. He’ll be celebrating his first year in Sunset Park this December. Schwartz works as a teacher’s assistant at the Bronx Early College Academy through the non-profit organization City Year, his income is a modest $1,000 stipend. “Moving here was a total shot in the dark for me, but everything is kind of working out.”
Schwartz’s’ home state has only elected two democrats since 1960, one of them being Pres. Obama. However, Schwartz somehow emerged as a vocally liberal democrat, “I had a socially conscious but somewhat conservative upbringing.”
Schwartz’ mother comes from a conservative, Episcopalian family. He interacted minimally with them saying they didn’t really have a strong familial connection, “being with them was a completely different experience”.
His father being an overwhelmingly, liberal, Jewish man taught Schwartz about politics and the importance of being an active citizen, “I was included in adult conversations from an early age. We’d talk about sports, news. It was natural to talk politics while we ate, watched television. It was just normal discussion.”
Those discussions were mostly democratic, “They were all rooted in this idea that it’s about more than me, it’s about us. But it’s the best way of how to manage us, and thinking about the collective was always, like the mantra of the discussions.”
While clearing his throat Schwartz pulls down the strings of his gray hoodie. His small bearded face becoming a shadow in the florescent lighting of his kitchen. He sips his glass and stares straight ahead.
“And I, I think that just happened naturally. It’s not like it was ever explained, it’s not like it was group facilitation. Where it’s like this is the point! This is the thesis! Those rules weren’t laid out for family discussion.”, he pauses. “But if I look back, that was definitely the theme. Always.”
Schwartz is a strong American liberal, raised in the Virginia Beach and Richmond, Virginia. After his high school career, he began his work in civic duty. Beginning in non-profit work in his city, “I had to smoke Newport’s just to fit in!”, he laughs remembering his time riding in trucks with older African American men, to enlisting in the U.S. Coast Guard.
As a liberal from the South this election is worrying Schwartz. He is confused by his nations choice’s. Secretary Hillary Clinton was his first choice to be president but things became complicated when Senator Bernie Sanders was introduced.
Schwartz began learning more about Clinton and her past policies, “I’m finding out about all these lies that Hillary Clinton has told. How unreliable she is, the terribly racist parts of her, not only just the things that she’s said and the way that she’s lived her life but her husband’s policies. I really found out a lot more in the past year or so about her husband’s policies and how they hurt African Americans, especially African American males.”
This new information led to some deep political soul searching for Schwartz, “As a person who lives by moral conviction as often as I can. A person who is very intentional thoughtful about how I walk through life and the choices that I make and how they affect people. In the primary it just seemed right to me (to vote for Sanders). I can’t sleep at night knowing I did not vote for the best person here.”
Sanders’ was Schwartz’s ideal presidential candidate, he stood up to big business, supported the elimination of student loan debt, wasn’t aligned with any Super Pac’s, and had actually protested in the civil rights movement. Sander’s stood up for ‘the collective’ Schwartz’s family always taught him about.
“It took me all the way up until the week of the primary…I just I didn’t know if it made sense. If he was electable…. I don’t even know if someone that left has ever run before. But him standing completely on his own on stage, stages across America and speaking about people and for the people and doing it on a very low budget. I mean that was moving.”
But Sander’s didn’t win the primary and Schwartz was left with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as his choices, “Both of them are not my America, and I have no respect for a Bernie Sanders supporters who won’t vote for Clinton. There’s just so much at stake, and I don’t know…if you care, if you really care, it’s about making the best choice with your human being, citizen, vote in the United States of America. For the primaries that was definitely Bernie Sanders. So I flipped it was Hillary, then it was Bernie, and obviously I’m back to Hillary, just because it has to be, it has to be.”