It is mourning again in Park Slope.
The heart of progressive Brooklyn is in shock after the nation elected Republican Donald Trump as the country’s Commander in Chief on Tuesday, with locals brushing back tears as they trudged to work on a Wednesday morning that felt more like the day after tomorrow, according to one local leader.
“We’re all a little shell-shocked today,” said Community Board 6 district manager Craig Hammerman. “I saw people in tears this morning walking through the streets. There was a lot of hugging — just a very sad tone.”
It was an especially bad way to wake up for one local who would otherwise have been celebrating her birthday on Nov. 9.
“This is the worst birthday I’ve ever had,” said 20-year Slope resident Ivice Rose.
More than 30,000 neighborhood residents cast a ballot in the presidential race, according to a Park Slope Courier analysis of state voter data available as of Wednesday afternoon — of those, around 28,000 went to Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton, and only 1,500 to Trump.
But Trump’s victory was in many ways a national rebuke of the Park Slope way of life — a place where grocery shoppers argue over Palestinian rights, fashionistas shilled handmade Clinton and Bernie Sanders T-shirts, and a synagogue dedicated its sukkah to the global refuge crisis — and his elevation to the nation’s highest office came as a revelation to some that the neighborhood is not in sync with other parts of the nation, according to one resident.
“I think it’s a wake-up call,” said Michelle de la Uz, local resident and executive director of local social justice outfit the Fifth Avenue Committee. “I think people weren’t necessarily fully aware of how disaffected folks are around the country — we tend to be in a bubble here.”
Locals in liberal strongholds across the country protested after Tuesday’s shock result, but Park Slope remained grimly somber on Tuesday evening and into the next day, as residents were still in a state of shock, de la Uz said.
“There’s just a lot of shock and mourning going on right now,” she explained. “I think people are literally going through the steps of mourning. The anger part of it will come later.”
