they just bring a miserable attitude to everything?
This is in part a function of the first part.
I say mostly when I talk about why we should participate in elections on some level. There is a strange defeatist attitude and closed mindedness to them when trying to discuss real action.
It’s like, fuck, I completely sympathize with the idea that voting won’t bring the necessary reforms in our current system. I may not be at that level of despair just yet, but I get it, there’s nothing in principle wrong with rejecting electoralism as a solution.
But “Harm reduction isn’t important” is utterly insane.
If you think canvassing is a waste of time, if you think your polling place is going to be flooded with bullshit and you have a family to take care of, if you aren’t going to even bother with donating to a DemSoc candidate, that’s all legitimate. But if you (generic you, not you personally) live in a place where voting is easy and you aren’t doing the bare minimum of ten fucking minutes of your time for harm reduction; or worse, are actively discouraging harm reduction of that sort?
Get fucked. The people who shit on harm reduction are more interested in being the purest coprophage around rather than the actual lives of marginalized demographics
At a minimum its also about credibility. A movement that cannot get its followers to periodically show up somewhere to fill out a sheet of paper is likely not going to persuade those followers to a higher level of civil disobedience.
Particularly since the vote is not going to get you beat up at the moment. Case in point Uganda just had elections and had soldiers around to intimidate. A dictator does not want the opposition to be willing to vote as that is a show of numbers and would give the opposition confidence that they have the strength to over throw. After all everyone saw everyone show up.
I personally would agree that we won’t fix the system just by voting, but it is a way to engage and get something that we want in the mean time as well as show that we are a real movement outside of online spaces.
The thing is also that elections are a bit like a marathon. They take prep. Can’t just show up and expect to go far. As lefties we have not done much to prep and get our platform. Thankfully we have AOC and Mamdami showing that we can on some level expect results. In Texas there is a Mamdami type running on primaries atm by the name of Rosas.
This is in part a function of the first part.
I say mostly when I talk about why we should participate in elections on some level. There is a strange defeatist attitude and closed mindedness to them when trying to discuss real action.
It’s like, fuck, I completely sympathize with the idea that voting won’t bring the necessary reforms in our current system. I may not be at that level of despair just yet, but I get it, there’s nothing in principle wrong with rejecting electoralism as a solution.
But “Harm reduction isn’t important” is utterly insane.
If you think canvassing is a waste of time, if you think your polling place is going to be flooded with bullshit and you have a family to take care of, if you aren’t going to even bother with donating to a DemSoc candidate, that’s all legitimate. But if you (generic you, not you personally) live in a place where voting is easy and you aren’t doing the bare minimum of ten fucking minutes of your time for harm reduction; or worse, are actively discouraging harm reduction of that sort?
Get fucked. The people who shit on harm reduction are more interested in being the purest coprophage around rather than the actual lives of marginalized demographics
At a minimum its also about credibility. A movement that cannot get its followers to periodically show up somewhere to fill out a sheet of paper is likely not going to persuade those followers to a higher level of civil disobedience.
Particularly since the vote is not going to get you beat up at the moment. Case in point Uganda just had elections and had soldiers around to intimidate. A dictator does not want the opposition to be willing to vote as that is a show of numbers and would give the opposition confidence that they have the strength to over throw. After all everyone saw everyone show up.
I personally would agree that we won’t fix the system just by voting, but it is a way to engage and get something that we want in the mean time as well as show that we are a real movement outside of online spaces.
The thing is also that elections are a bit like a marathon. They take prep. Can’t just show up and expect to go far. As lefties we have not done much to prep and get our platform. Thankfully we have AOC and Mamdami showing that we can on some level expect results. In Texas there is a Mamdami type running on primaries atm by the name of Rosas.