Vote for candidates who will hear you out
Ask me why I do what I do and my answer is not that altruistic. I hate feeling like political road kill. When I’m doing I don’t feel like a victim. This morning (FWIW) I’ll be electing members to the Democratic National Committee for the next four years from North Carolina. I want change agents. Not people intent on adding another bullet item to their long political resumes but not do anything with the position (and there will be plenty of those in the running).
Yeah, the system is flawed. But as my friend Anat Shenker-Osorio says, “Forget about the lesser of two evils, and focus on choosing a president open to hearing you out on a whole bunch of evils.”
Anat tells The Ink why you should not panic:
What do you say to people who are burned out on the idea that we have to fight fascism again this November? How can you keep them focused despite an unending sense of crisis, through another election cycle that looks a whole lot like the last one?
Keep your eye on what really matters — making room for progressive change
Here’s what I say. When you look at the actual progressive gains that we have had in our society, when you look at the landmark civil rights legislation — the de jure, not de facto, end of segregation — when you look at women finally having their inherent right to vote be recognized — by the way, I refuse to say that women were given the right to vote or Black folks were given the right to vote. We had the right all along. Some people had some trouble understanding that, because that’s what it means to be endowed by a creator — whether you believe in one or not — with inalienable rights. Like no one’s giving those out. That’s just by virtue of being human…
But I digress. The Americans with Disabilities Act, marriage equality, the eight-hour workday, child labor laws — all of the gains that I think any real progressive person would point to as What are the things that have actually moved society along? — none of those, none, have happened because we elected the right person. None of those have happened by ballot. Even if some of marriage equality happened by ballot initiative, all of those things have happened because there has been pressure — sustained, smart, strategic pressure from outside of the electoral system.
Elections aren’t everything — they’re just part of the struggle
I don’t think that any person within the civil rights movement would ever have thought, “Oh, well, it’s really just a question of who we elect president. We’re just going to work on who’s going to be president.” And thought that that was actually going to create legislation.
F.D.R. himself said prior to passing the New Deal (and, obviously, it was a big deal that he was the person in charge at that point), “If you want these things to happen, make me. Make me.”
And so what I say to people who are burned out — after empathizing with them, because, again, I do try to follow my own advice, and I don’t start with, “How dare you?” or, “Do you not understand that fascism is on the rise?” That kind of discourse is not empathetic, not active listening, not starting with a shared value.
Accept the limitations of the system — and look towards real goals
The place that I’ve come to is this: that it is a correct assessment. It’s my assessment, too, that the electoral system is a piece of garbage. I mean, it really just truly is a piece of garbage. And another bit of language that I refuse to use, I never talk about saving our democracy or restoring our democracy. We don’t have a democracy. We have never had a democracy.
A democracy isn’t an electoral college. It isn’t a Senate and a system that grossly overrepresents rural people, that lets acres of land vote, and means human beings in California and New York don’t count equally and doesn’t let people in D.C. vote period, full stop, or be represented.
I think that it’s not accidental that we have measurably historic distrust of institutions, that we have what we call double-no voters. Double-no is like, “Don’t like him, don’t like him.” That is all just a product, and proof, of the fact that the electoral system is — and this is the most generous thing I can say — garbage.
Forget about the lesser of two evils, and focus on choosing a president open to hearing you out on a whole bunch of evils
So what you do is acknowledge that issue. You say that an election — choosing who is going to be at the helm of this system — is choosing who is going to be responding to us when we’re agitating through other lanes. It’s choosing who is in power when we say, “No, this policy is unjust and unfair.”
Is it someone who is going to allow that speech to occur? Is it someone who is going to permit protest in front of the White House? Is it someone who is going to allow us to march? Is it someone who — on the more positive side — is going to march alongside the UAW when strikes are happening? Or is it someone who has told us that he will be sending you to the gulag for daring to speak out against him?
Sometimes I feel really perplexed by people who say, “The system is broken. Voting for the lesser of evils is still evil. We’re going to vote third party,” or, “We’re not going to vote top-of-ticket, or not vote at all.” What’s mystifying is not that these people have identified — rightly, because I agree — that the electoral system is garbage, but that they think that they can use the electoral system to fix the electoral system?
That doesn’t make any sense to me. The message is vote for our freedoms, strike for our families, march for our futures. We vote for Biden-Harris and for Democrats on November 5th. And on November 6th, we have a general strike (in my fantasy world where there’s a general strike because I honestly believe that nothing in America is ever going to change unless we withhold our labor). We’re saying, “We elected you. Here’s the deal. Here is what that vote means.”
So here’s the question you want people to keep in mind: What is the world that we want and how do we get it? In pursuit of that, voting is just one of the tools in our toolbox — it may be insufficient on its own, but making the choice is absolutely necessary.
And bring a towel. I did.
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