Whenever I cover this coming election cycle there are always fearmongerers who use the threat of Trump as a tactic to bully people to “vote blue no matter who” or that we must vote for the “lesser of two evils.” Even Biden himself has essentially said the equivalent of “at least I’m not Trump” when asked about low voter support from Arab USians. This type of threat to push people to vote for Biden is neither helpful nor hopeful, and it is not welcome in my house. (See House Rules in my saved stories if you are new here.)
In our strategy, we must factor in the fact that people are truly struggling. Physically and mentally. People have not yet even processed or healed from the pandemic. Covid is at one of its highest levels right now. Corporate-generated inflation is making it impossible to afford to live. Suic*de was at its highest EVER recorded rate last year, during the Biden administration.
On top of this, the world is witnessing multiple genocides happening every day, over months and years while these leaders that we have been asked to “elect” and put into office are fueling the very death and destruction. For many, what is happening under the current administration is the worst trauma, death, and oppression they have ever experienced in their entire lives.
One’s vote should not be taken for granted by any candidate let alone other fellow voters. Candidates should deliberate for our vote. Every single vote. Candidates have become so powerful and privileged that have realized they just need to do the bare minimum to be less terrible than the other person. They don’t need to care about every vote. They only need to care about just enough votes in just a few states.
So when an increasing number of us say, we are not going to vote for a candidate who is funding a genocide, that is having the integrity to want to hold a candidate, a party, and a system accountable. It is having the principles to challenge a broken white cis het colonial system that is based on assumptions. The assumption of our votes. The assumption of our fealty.
So to say that “if Trump wins everything is over” is to say that you are not actually here for collective liberation. Because you are shutting down the possibility and continuation of the work. Our work. Will you stop doing the work if he becomes President? If you stop doing the work, then yes, it is over for you. But it is over because you stopped because you chose to stop.
To state that everything is lost if Trump wins means you are still only viewing a short-term strategy within the system. The very system we are saying is flawed and corrupt. It also deeply dishonors the hundreds of years of resistance struggles by all of our ancestors against all odds.
We do not want Trump to win at all. However, fear tactics are the tool of the oppressor. Telling people to vote for someone because of a threat. That is what happens in dictatorships. That is not organizing. That is not building movement.
As far as I’m concerned our work goes beyond who wins an election between wealthy individual politicians. It goes beyond 2024. It goes beyond “borders.” Our work goes until everyone, in turtle island, in Palestine, in Sudan, in the DRC, everyone everywhere is liberated.
What people need right now is the possibility of a different reality. Not threats of a less evil world in which one will barely get by.
My people and I, we are having conversations, we are planning, we are visioning, we are organizing, we are strategizing. And these strategies hold no matter who is in office. Please do so too. Whether with your existing community or by joining one of the many that have been built over the past years, and even months. Find each other and build based on possibility, not on fear.
The entire reason oppression exists is because of fear. So let us supplant it by fighting for what we want our world to be instead. With each other. With collective liberation.
Comments are closed.