You can watch this essay, or read it! The written version has more swears. Video is at the end. It’s all a little yell-y. Enjoy.
I gotta be honest, when Biden bombed that debate with Trump on June 27th, I was pretty freaked out.
While I voted for him, I was never a huge Biden stan. He was such a monumental improvement from Trump, and especially in the wake of the January 6th insurrection, it felt clear that the country had made the right decision. So I do want to acknowledge his accomplishments. He loaded up the courts with women of color and folks who are considered progressive in the justice system. I resent his tiptoeing around bodily autonomy, not canceling all student debt and then telling SCOTUS to shove it. I am physically ill watching the literal fallout of his refusal to stop sending weapons of mass destruction to Israel. If we had a relationship status, it would be “It’s complicated.” Not the genocide though. Ethnic cleansing is not complicated. But the relationship isn’t quite over yet. Big sigh.
So last Sunday when I crawled off the side of a mountain after 11 miles in 9.5 hours, the end of which was in 90 degree heat and heard people saying “Biden dropped out”, I thought they were joking. In fairness, I wasn’t sure I didn’t have heat stroke or some other sun-inspired illness at the time so it made sense.
Days later, when I’d recovered enough to think, it really hit me. Biden was out. Vice President Harris is in. This seems like a net positive.
I was glad. I am glad. After all, Biden (kinda?) promised he would not seek a second term. And he has been bombing a lot lately, not only Palestine and debates, but also in the polls. It was the right move and I’m legitimately shocked he made it. Very few men who have ever run for president did what they thought was best for the country at a huge personal cost to their own egos.
I want to be pragmatic here. Ethnic cleansing is not “an issue” in the election. But for me, saying “I won’t do what I can to stop the slide into fascism” doesn’t feel like a viable solution either. Unless you’re a brand new adult, this is not the first time you’ve voted while an ethnic cleansing was subsidized by our government. I voted for Biden in 2020 despite knowing full well that we were giving bombs to the Saudis to bomb Yemeni civilians, and leaving millions on the brink of starvation, and that Biden would not stop it. I don’t think Yemeni people are any less human than Palestinian people. Yet, I made that choice.
My logic was, if we only vote when the US isn’t doing war crimes and human rights abuses, we aren’t ever going to vote. And if we never vote again, the US will continue to do war crimes and human rights abuses.
I fully and unequivocally support American citizens of the global majority/People of Color and Indigenous Americans in not voting. I will absolutely shout you down if you start condescending to Arab and Palestinian Americans about how they need to vote in order to save y’all from fascism. Nope. This system WAS NOT MADE FOR US. You do not get to bully us into voting. This is your ethical mess. A mess YOU benefit from materially. You clean it tf up. We aren’t the help.
I also fully acknowledge that if Trump is elected we likely won’t even be allowed to post on social media about Palestine, never mind showing up in the streets to demand that the bombings stop. We already know Trump gives zero f*cks about constitutional rights of protestors. We already know Trump will assassinate protestors he doesn’t like. This is all documented. So I don’t actually think the “lesser of two evils” model applies. The model is more like “you want to keep some of your rights or you want to give up some of your rights”? That’s the question for me.
Younger people threatening to not vote over Palestine doesn’t really phase me. Like whoa buddy, cool. Younger people are the least dependable voting bloc. I’m sorry but it’s objectively true. It was true when I was young and it’s true now. Stay home if you want. But you’re not hurting Vice President Harris or Donald Trump by not voting, you’re just another data point showing what will be interpreted as the “apathy of American youth” or something.
The way I see it, voting is a tool to get part of a job done. We use our votes to choose which material (candidates) we want to work on with our tools. I don’t always get the material I voted for, but refusing to participate in the selection process isn’t going to hurt the material’s feelings or teach it a lesson on how it should be better. For now, I have a right to the tool of voting. So to throw it on the ground and walk away when it’s mine - even if the material we’re being given is basically dog sh*t - isn’t going to cause the materials to suffer. Again, I don’t hold other PoC to this standard because we are not your negros. Or dog sh*t cleaners. Or your slave labor. Or fill in the blank. Etc.
Also. My grandparents couldn’t vote in every state in this country until they were in their 30s. Like. THIS is the America we’re getting on the backward train toward greatness? Nah, I’m good. I’d rather stay in neutral and be allowed to yell at the conductor than to go in reverse and get shot for complaining about it. (What is with these melodramatic analogies today?!) If anything, throwing our tools under the train to stop it from sliding backward is better than throwing them away and riding backward down the hill. (I no longer understand how this part analogy works and should have deleted it. Sorry. lol)
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