First things first: if the time change is kickin’ your tail like it is kickin’ mine, here’s a little playlist for ya. 16 songs from John Darnielle to help us befriend the shadows and outrun our demons. Love y’all.
Now, some thoughts on electoral politicking:
At the beginning of 2020, I was on Pete Buttigieg’s payroll.
I was conflicted. My politics were left of his — I supported Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and student debt cancelation — however, I was more immediately concerned with issues I perceived to be foundational to the Republic, a institution I thought it was critical to protect: Supreme Court reform, abolishing the Electoral College, coupled with a slow tinkering on public goods. I thought the most viable progressive candidate would be one who knew how to work from within, play by the rules, and make the tiniest steps towards a more perfect union. America was full of broken systems, but with a solid tune-up we’d be back on track.
I pushed past my internal conflict and knocked doors and phone-banked until the last moment on February 29th. We lost. The next day, an All Staff campaign call appeared on my calendar. It was over, the campaign suspended. We were all unemployed.
The very next day, Pete endorsed Biden, and I sat at home watching the news — boiling over in anger towards corporate democrats and kicking myself for falling for their wonderboy.
Less than two weeks later, Governor McMaster declared a state of emergency in SC. Newly unemployed. No one was hiring. I realized both the extent of my precarity and the extent to which the american government disdains human life.
Like many of americans, I was radicalized in 2020.
I’m sure many of you have similar stories to tell. I hope we all find language to begin telling our stories, when and if we ever catch our breath.
By the end of 2020, I embraced a wide range of tactics for political change, but I still thought electoral politics was a critical strategy.
I ran for office to try to drive up turn out. I registered voters. I knocked doors for local candidates. I texted reminders about voting deadlines. I took snacks, coffee, and water to the polls on election day. After the November election, I turned to GA for the run off. Saturdays and Sundays, I headed south on I-85 to volunteer for Warnock and Ossoff in the US Senate Runoff. I knocked those doors for climate change, for pandemic management, for the protection of our civil liberties, and a living wage.
Now, I live in GA. This is the first time I’ve ever lived in a swing state.
And I didn’t vote.
Primarily, I didn’t vote because I wasn’t eligible. Switching over my license from SC to GA, and then completing the necessary paperwork to make vehicle registration and such match was cost prohibitive — as it was designed to be — my paycheck hadn’t landed yet. I missed the deadline.
There are still a few elected officials in america who have given me hope. One of these folks is District 2 Commissioner Mariah Parker in Athens, GA. Or, I suppose I should say “one of these folks was” since they resigned on August 31st. As this summer was ending, Mariah posted this to their Instagram:
I sat in a meeting not long ago, surrounded by a small group of people with a century of local government involvement between them. We needled at prospective politics, identifying loophole after loophole that housing cartels could exploit to negate work toward housing as a human right.
Exasperated, one member of the meeting joked aloud: “Late stage capitalism!”
[…] We all feel it, but many are scared to say it: the Mayor & Commission are elected, but it’s money that governs.
[…] Our constituents look to us to reign in this organized greed, and I am committed to do that. But I accept now that this aim is largely incompatible with the work of a county commissioner, as prescribed.
[…] Our crises are compounding, and leaders are needed in the streets to help build new mass movements insistent on a level of transformation that far transcends what we as commissioners can deliver.
- check out their full post @mariahforathens on IG
Mariah’s line “I accept now that [reigning in this organized greed] is largely incompatible with the work of [an elected official]” hit me like a gut punch.
America is not a broken State. Death, destruction, cruelty, greed, oppression — this is by design. This is the function of the State. And if this is true, why should we think any meaningful change could come from american statecraft?
In an earlier post I asked y’all if you were voting and why you were voting. Thank you so much for sharing your insights — I can’t tell you how much your emails mean to me, especially in this strange season of isolation.
Most of you voted, but everyone that wrote to me voted with a sense of discontent. The reasons spanned the gamut: LGBTQ rights, reproductive choice, obligation, dimming hope, “then I remember: / there are children inside.”1 But underneath it all was a sense of weariness, lethargy, and despondency. I've been registering voters since before I was allowed to vote myself. The Rock the Vote campaigns of my youth, the mass enfranchising that occurred via Obama for America's organizing, even the mock elections in high school cafeterias -- to vote was exciting, empowering, a moment to use your voice. These days, I hear very few folks talk about voting with such language. Now: Voting as harm reduction. Voting as a fire extinguisher against a mighty blaze. Voting as the least you can do.
I wonder where this shift in tone emerged. Is it a response to our knowledge that the game is rigged from Citizens United to gerrymandering? Our disappointment with Democrats and disgust towards Republicans? A sense that both parties are a part of a big, big club that we’re not invited to?
All those perhaps, but I want to posit something a bit more hopeful: our disillusionment with voting is because we are recovering our agency. We refuse to continue to “fetishize our spiritual powerlessness”2 and instead turn our energy towards tactics that get the goods: direct action, mutual aid, labor organizing, etc. Mariah didn’t turn in their resignation to sit on the sidelines of struggle, they took up more power by leaving the council chambers and returning to our streets.
I’m registered to vote in time for the GA runoff. Currently, I’m reading Why Anarchists Don’t Vote: Radical Criticisms of Representative Government. I’m uncertain if I will cast my ballot, uncertain if I can do it in good conscience or if it would even make a difference. But here’s what I am certain of:
We need leaderful streets. We need a mass movement full of folks who are powerful, unstoppable. We need folks who will spend their creative (and destructive!) energy for the sake of liberation. We need each other out here.
“Fellow-workers! Don’t expect to get your right from the despicable gang of vote peddlers. They will never come to your rescue. You must help yourself, and act for yourself. Exercise your own energy and initiative. Realize your own needs, assert your own will, and learn to take instead of begging for the crumbs that might fall from the table of your masters.
Organize with your fellow-workers on the lines of your common economic interests. Stand shoulder to shoulder in international solidarity, and you will be strong enough to liberate the world from the robber capitalism and from the murderous rule of government.”3
There’s a future world waiting for us. Together, we can build it.
Kyle Tran Myhre, “Voting as a Fire Extinguisher”
Escalating Identity, “Who is Oakland?”
Alexander Berkman, 1912
Here is why *I* vote: they need to know they don’t have us all. They need to know there are people - even if it’s 20%, 30% or 49% - who don’t want them. We need to vote so that there is an actual opportunity for grassroots organization, because if we don’t vote, they will take complete control and shut us all down. But the frustration with how little it matters in a blood red state is very real. William Timmons should have had a challenger for his seat but he had none. There were several unopposed republicans on my ballot. That should never happen in democracy no one should run unopposed.