A dozen Black canvassers were tricked, threatened, and driven in seatless U-Haul vans. They were fired after WIRED reported on their plight—some without full pay or a way back home.

Standing next to her hastily packed suitcase in Michigan’s Macomb County Wednesday night, Tyra Muldrow had a bad feeling in her gut.

“I have this eerie feeling that I need to get the hell up out of there,” says Muldrow, a 20-year-old Black woman from Florida. She was in Michigan as a door knocker, hired by a subcontractor for Elon Musk’s America PAC operation to turn out the vote for Donald Trump in the heavily contested working-class suburbs of Detroit.

Muldrow and the rest of her canvassing group of roughly a dozen people had just been fired en masse, after WIRED reported that they had been tricked and threatened as part of Musk’s get-out-the-vote effort. Speaking publicly for the first time about her ordeal, Muldrow says that the canvassers in her group were fired with little explanation beyond a complaint that someone had spoken with the press. Many, including her, were still owed money. Muldrow had to find her own way home; others are still stranded in Michigan.

A representative for Musk and America PAC did not return a request for comment.

  • Gerudo@lemm.ee
    23·
    2 months ago

    A lot have reported that they didn’t know they were campaigning for the PAC.