Echoes of a Past Life: Less Voting, More Revolution

Election boycott poster from the PRP-BR, Portugal 1975.

I wrote this piece in advance of the 2018 mid-term elections which would see the Democratic Party return to power in the House of Representatives. It appeared on Counterpunch, August 17, 2018.

Let me say that I hope you, like me, share a vision of a better world. You’re looking around at the unleashed white supremacy, the rampant misogyny, the war machines churning death and destruction unchecked, and a growing culture of nihilistic hatred, and you know it doesn’t have to be this way. You believe in a world free of oppression based on sex, gender, sexual identity, or ability; free of racism and privilege; perhaps even one free of exploitation, with a radical redistribution of the world’s wealth and resources based on collective betterment and the preservation of the planet.
You’ve probably read your Marx and Engels, some Lenin and Luxemburg, and possibly even picked out your choice of diverging paths from the likes of Mao or Trotsky or Goldman. And like me, you’re looking at the tiny left, hearing the loud voices of our enemies, and are deeply worried about the future. You’re tired of watching the police exercise their complete impunity by murdering young people of color in real-time video, and anxious about the kind of society for which a handful of demagogues and too many of our neighbors are clamoring. Like me, your anxiety is through the roof.
It’s also possible that you’re looking at the phenomenal growth of the ideologically mercurial Democratic Socialists of America and the rise of a handful of charismatic young reform politicians running on Democratic Party tickets and wondering if maybe you should set aside what you’ve studied, and listen to the voices of those warning against purity and perfection in the face of unprecedented danger. Everybody’s talking about socialism now so maybe this defensive posture of incrementalism with a dose of electoral optimism holds a path forward to hope? I mean, something’s gotta give… maybe the voices urging us to get out the vote in the next, surely most important, election of our lives are right?

I’m here to tell you no, if you really consider yourself a socialist and want the lasting realization of that better world, then tell those voices to shut the fuck up. 

If you grew up in the USA like I did, you grew up learning that we live in a representative democracy. You were taught that your vote was your sacred voice as a citizen, and your path to contributing to our nation’s bright and shiny future. You know that’s all a big fat lie, right? There is nothing representative nor democratic about the United States of America.

You won’t have to dive too deeply back into your stack of Marxist classics to be reminded that what we actually live in is a dictatorship: the dictatorship of the bourgeois class over the rest of us. Turns out that a dictatorship doesn’t require jackboots and concentration camps to be real, though my money certainly isn’t on writing off those particular trappings from some of our potential futures.
The truth is that the system we live in, administered by the capitalist class for its own benefit, is designed to preserve itself and prevent its displacement. There is zero chance, let me repeat, zero chance, that the capitalist class and its representatives will ever be voted out of power. There’s a vast racket in place to ensure this; one that is actually backed up by the threat of brute force. Polite people don’t really like to contemplate that, but it’s there, waiting. You can see this racket in place in trivial ways like when the DNC tries to isolate the Sanders wing of its own party, and you can see it in less trivial ways like when the CIA jumps in to overthrow elected politicians like Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende back in the 1970s, murdering thousands in the process.

Oh sure, sometimes the capitalist class gives up a little when the peasants are revolting and the torches and pitchforks get close, witness our fading social benefits won during the ever-more distant class struggles of the first half of the twentieth-century. But they know that as long as we play by the rules they make, they don’t have too much to worry about. Their game is rigged, and our voices are coopted.

There’s a deeper truth there you may have missed: when it comes to changing the world for the better, their game isn’t that important. It isn’t actually necessary. It isn’t actually the arena for social change. And it certainly isn’t anywhere on the path to socialism. What they call “politics” is not actually where politics are. Try and figure out what the Democratic Party actually stands for: compare notes on its printed platform and the actions of its elected office-holders when they have voting majorities and when they don’t. You’ll walk away hoping they stand for the same thing you do but in the end you’ll realize they don’t care about anything but getting elected. And money. They care about money a lot, just like the Republicans do. In case it’s not clear, a Democratic Party electoral victory is a victory for a wing of the capitalist class and the self-perpetuation of the system, not a victory for the rest of us. Your participation in their campaigns might make you feel like you’re doing something — anything — but what you’re actually doing is perpetuating the lie.

It doesn’t matter if the charming and enthusiastic young reform candidates throw around a few socialist buzzwords during their campaigns, and occasionally talk movingly about the dramatic inequalities and injustices in our society. It won’t be socialism that’s winning at that ballot box, it will be the Democratic Party. You might wanna dig a little deeper into what they mean by socialism anyway, cause if they’re just talking taxing rich people and adding snowplows and health insurance, you’re being sold a bill of goods. Go ahead, ask them about imperialism and war. I’ll just sit and wait.
The Democratic Party’s claim to be the natural home for “the Blacks and the Gays” is pretty much akin to an abusive spouse telling his wife how much she really needs him in between the beatings. For a handy microcosm, check out hipster New York City mayor Bill DeBlasio, his photogenic and earnest family of color, and his real-world willingness to let the NYPD run parallel systems for white and Black New Yorkers. Hint: the NYPD gets to murder and brutalize Black and brown New Yorkers impeded only by faint complaint while white New Yorkers get luxury housing and bike lanes. Get out of that abusive relationship, and get out of it right now.

That political party you’re voting for is not just people metaphorically representing what you hope are progressive ideas, they are a bunch of people who actually want to administer the apparatus of the capitalist state. That means the people who make it into government become the little Eichmanns who press the buttons behind all the machineries of war, repression, mass incarceration, border exclusion, and police militarization: all the lying bureaucracies of your choice. What kind of socialist wants to be responsible for any of THAT?

The 2016 elections were a national spectacle that went on for more than two years of insufferable media coverage bringing extraordinary displays of unrestrained assholism from the candidates of all involved parties straight into our living rooms and smart phones. And yet, millions and millions of Americans didn’t bother to vote. Before you suck your teeth at your fellow citizens failing to fulfill their duties, consider for a moment that those millions were the smart ones and those of you who were terrified into pulling the levers for your choice of despicable human beings vying for a seat in one of several slave-built whitewashed DC mansions, were the victims of a horrifying mass blackmail operation designed to rob you of your humanity and independent will.

Those millions of non-voters have seen the game and refused to play. Certainly political apathy is a factor among that massive plurality; but when offered a choice from among differently colored casks of putrid sewage for your evening beverage, I’m not sure apathy isn’t called for.

I don’t know if she considered herself any kind of Marxist, but the late queer poet and theorist Audre Lorde famously said, “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”She came to this realization from a deep place of exclusion: as a woman of color and a queer feminist she saw how fundamentally screwed up the world was, and how revolutionary any approach to fixing it needed to be. If you check that stack of books you’ll see that Lenin was trying to tell you something pretty similar when he described the capitalist state and how revolutionaries must win socialism. And that vision of a completely new world, egalitarian and socialist, remains our only real hope for surviving the shithole that capitalist-run human society is digging for itself.

Time is a wasting. In the early twentieth-century there were waves of electoral success for various open and explicitly socialist movements right here in the United States. They led nowhere. Today there are a tiny handful of openly socialist elected politicians, most of whom realized that they wouldn’t actually even get elected if they ran on an openly socialist ticket. I don’t know about you, but watching parts of the country consumed by fires as others submerge under polluted waters I’m pretty sure we don’t have time to wait for thousands more sewer socialists to be elected to rediscover that such politicians only reach an accommodation with capitalism not a confrontation with it. That genuine change that Audre Lorde hoped for demands our attention.

Voting for Democrats — with their proven record of subjugating social movements for their electoral advantage — or joining an organization like DSA that fails to understand the fundamental nature of the capitalist state and its apparatuses, these don’t actually get us closer to socialism. I’d ask every activist who self identifies as a socialist and wants to go out campaigning for candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cynthia Nixon how they actually expect that story to end. When they convince a skeptic into voting for an over-promising sweet-talking politician who turns out to be the scorpion to the voters’ frog, who benefits from that predictable reveal? Not the reputation of socialism. Socialism will not arrive if we forget that it exists only as a fundamental challenge to existing class society. Might want to go back to that stack of books on that one.

Well, goddamn it, we have to do something, you say. And indeed we do.

While I’m not about to pretend I have easy answers, I’m also not trying to be a downer; actually quite the contrary. How about we actually advocate for socialist revolution? Once upon a time the red flag inspired millions of strangers to see each other as comrades in the struggle, daring to fight together for that better world. We should reclaim that spirit of solidarity, empathy, sister- and brotherhood, militantly standing up for each other as oppressed and exploited people collectively and openly fighting for our own free future.

That stuff in the books hasn’t been disproved, we shouldn’t be doubting ourselves. We do need better organizations than we have, this is undeniable and it’s a messy process. We need to work on making sure our vision of socialism this time round is inclusive and intersectional and committed to forms and processes of real mass democracy, the likes of which we can barely imagine today. And we need to be upfront about opposing the exploits of the imperialist empire in whose belly we live.
But we don’t need the Democrats. And we don’t need to waste our time on their pointless and fake elections. Maybe down the road when we are strong we can run our own anti-candidates to expose the electoral charade from within. But right now we should join the nonvoters and do everything in our power to explain how utterly crucial it is for the people ourselves to take direct action to preserve our future from capitalist barbarism.

That corrupt and pointless electoral game of capitalist America belongs in the trash. We should not let our enemies, our masters, tell us what tools are appropriate for extracting ourselves from the disaster they have foisted upon us.

There’s a lot of work to be done: We must reclaim the love, and the rage, that once made socialism a spectre of fear for the capitalists and a ray of hope for the world’s peoples. The stakes are high. This isn’t about politicians’ empty promises and platforms, it’s about taking a stand and saving our humanity from the genocidal forces being stoked daily. We must reclaim the will — and the power of our class — to win not elections, but a free and socialist world. It’s past time. Free your mind from the Democrats, your ass will follow.

#LessVotingMoreRevolution.

Election Day

I am deeply aware that people fought and died for their right to vote. Democracy is, or rather, would be, a good thing, and surely it is righteous for people to demand not to be excluded from what passes for political process. Democracy is theoretically a mechanism whereby collectivity resolves into taking action in an act of shared commitment and responsibility. Problem is, I don't think that's what's actually happening right now.

My head has spent the last year split in two places, one watching this extended dumpster fire of an election, and two immersed in doing research on the probably esoteric (outside Ethiopia that is) subject of the Ethiopian revolution. There in 1974, a group of dedicated communist revolutionaries started an underground newsletter called "Democracy," that became one of the most well-read political papers in the country. The "Democracy" these folks argued for (and died for, by the thousands) was first demanded of the emperor Haile Selassie, and later, after the military snatched power from a popular uprising, became a rallying cry for pushing aside the military in favor of a popular people's government. So I've had quite a few occasions to think about what democracy might mean.

Listen, this, this USA, this is not a real democracy. This is a parody of democracy: it is not those abstaining from voting today who are spitting in the face of the freedom riders of the 1960s, it is the entire political system that is doing so. An elaborate and deeply embarrassing spectacle that wasted millions of dollars (ie, made a bunch of entertainment companies rich) just left people with the "choice" between a bloated fascist businessman, a deeply unprincipled and dishonest career politician responsible for the deaths of untold thousands who happens to be a woman, and a handful of quixotic alternatives who, with the one notable exception of Mimi Soltysik of the Socialist Party — who isn't even on most printed ballots — specialize in peddling low-frequency bullshit. (And to be clear I include there everyone from the problematic Greens and PSL, to the reprehensible SEP, SWP, libertarians and WWP).

It should be obvious, and yet strangely is not, to most, that this is in fact a dictatorship, the dictatorship of rich property owners we Marxists like to call the bourgeoisie. A government by and for rich people that has diabolically convinced millions that every few years being forced to rubberstamp choices presented to you from column A or column B, when mostly people want and need something else entirely, is actually what "democracy" looks like. It's not. And if you think dictatorship is a harsh word, take off your blinders and look at the role of police in this country and the role of the American military in the world, and see that "they" don't really give a shit what you think. Ruling though repression, fear and circuses, the class that owns this country needs us a lot more than we need them.

It's like a sickness what this country does to people. Like you, I have been indoctrinated for most of my almost 58 years that voting is a sacred responsibility. I have previously voted for Democrats, previously voted third parties, and occasionally abstained. The one thing I have learned is that I will never again close my ears to the evil promises of politicians in favor of the few morsels I want to actually hear. And yet with everything I know and I have studied, I still find myself wracked with guilty obligation. And so I have tried to figure out what I would do today.

Watching the intense fear that has been whipped up by both Democrats and Republicans fills me with both disgust and sadness. I can't blame or condemn most people for exercising what feels like the only thing they can do to stave off the obvious dangers ahead, though I urge folks to hit the books for the truth how that "I voted" sticker is zero defense against an actual fascist onslaught. I am, it must be said, pretty disappointed not in regular people with good hearts taking a stand against the vile and noxious Trump, but in leftists willing to overlook the vile and noxious Clinton, but that's a more complicated story.

I wish that the left was strong enough to run what I believe is actually correct, a campaign of revolutionary abstentionism. I think it would be an excellent step along the way to presenting a transcendent vision of liberation that revolutionaries need to find a way to re-popularize if we are ever to move out of the realm of symbolism. Symbolism is right now the only thing a micro-movement for revolutionary abstention can offer. One day the withholding of our participation in this game will be a weapon; it's not that yet.

It seems to be a beautiful day outside. I'm ever so privileged to be unemployed today and not quite at the bottom of my bank account. That same beautiful blue sky extends west to the Dakotas, and east across oceans and seas to Syria; distances far beyond sight and hearing yet not beyond knowledge.
I know where my polling place is. But I'm going to walk the other way.

The 12 Steps

via facebook.

If Communism Is Dead, Why Are They Still Afraid of It?

Jodi Dean discusses the "Communist Horizon." From New York City's Brecht Forum. This is some dense Marxist philosophy but stay with it.

Next Weekend in Central Park: Spring Awakening 2012

"Spring Awakening 2012: Occupy New York City People's Assembly" is set for next weekend in New York City's Central Park. Full details are at the event's website here, and at their Facebook page here.

The event is in two parts, from 1pm to 3pm a open space gathering full of "soap boxing, teach-ins, music" and information/literature tables and blankets. The second half will be a facilitated assembly: a sort of rally that will break down into smaller groups to discuss strategy and planning for the Occupy movement in the upcoming period. It should be an interesting day, and it's not set as any kind of long-term occupation nor confrontation with authority so it should be our day in our space without the threat of state repression. A lot of folks from different Occupy groups and community and political organizations have been in on the planning. The Occupy group I've been participating in, Occupy/Ocupemos Sunset Park, should be representing.

See you there!

Full disclosure: I'm proud to say I've designed the flower-in-a-fist publicity materials for this event.

Keep Occupying!

The #OWS movement is off the front page headlines...for the moment. The Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City and those across the country have been mostly trashed and uprooted by a coordinated national campaign of violent repression...for the moment. But this is not over. And I'm not just saying that.

The movement is alive, and deepening all the time. There has been a sea change in political consciousness, and that continues filtering out across the roots and branches of society. As The Occupied Wall Street Journal says, "The Beginning Is Near." Protests and direct actions continue in NYC and nationally, building support for the notion of direct democracy. The words "Power to the People" have returned to life.

The movement of consciousness springing to life is not just the same old, same old. It's not just the shop-worn cliches and trite stereotypes and stale abstract ideas: it's the drive for human collective liberation returned to life, tidily encapsulated in the simple notion of the 99%.

One of the blogs I read is The Wild Hunt, a blog about the Neo-Pagan community that helps me to stay in touch with some of the ideas that have informed my own journey. Consider the editorial just published by its mainstay Jason Pitzl-Waters, "Occupying Everything" that concludes: "There have been those who’ve spent a lot of time pointing out that the Occupy movement has feet of clay, or has lost the moral high ground due to one incident or another, but I think such arguments miss the point. This isn’t about the good behavior of every Occupier, its about what needs to happen now. We need a shift in our priorities, we need the dramatic excesses of our current capitalistic system to be reigned in, and we need justice. I think modern Pagans have much to offer the Occupy movement, and that this movement has much to teach us in return. We are, after all, part of the 99% too. I know that there will be Pagans who disagree, who’ve written off the Occupy movement in one fashion or another, but I can no longer sit on the sidelines and pretend to have no opinion. For me, the Occupy movement is the movement I was waiting for during the anti-globalization protests of the 1990s, a true continuation of the work sparked by social justice pioneers like Dorothy Day, Gandhi, King, and Jane Addams. Now is the time for Pagans of a like mind to envision what our social justice looks like, to craft a theological and historical framework for a future where we have a voice, because that future is happening now. I guess what I’m saying is that we need to Occupy Paganism, and in turn, Occupy everything."

Pitzl-Waters understands, in a profoundly spiritual way, how the Occupy movement has resonated across society with a call for a world in which together we take back what is ours and then collectively share out of love, mutual respect, and responsibility.

I was at a meeting of Occupy Sunset Park, the organization that has sprung to life in my own Brooklyn neighborhood. A fellow emerging activist was saying how she felt the movement was reclaiming the notion of what is public, where parks and institutions are places that welcome and serve the communities in which they are located rather than act as fenced-off monuments to somebody's money.

I attended a terrific forum by the group Kasama which counts among its adherents one of the members of the Occupied Wall Street Journal editorial collective. Kasama is a profoundly radical communist organization but one that has approached the Occupy movement with creativity and respect. While I'm not sure they would use the word, I think they understand what a spiritual revolution OWS is engendering in peoples' consciousness. One Kasama leader described exactly how I feel: that for decades those of us who early in life awakened to consciousness as people yearning for social justice and human liberation — as revolutionaries — felt defeated; that the best we could hope for were lesser evils and retreating into living politically moral but isolated lives. And how the Occupy movement has changed everything, giving us back the hope and energy of what is possible.

We've experienced devastating one-sided class warfare for decades now, and finally the battle has been joined. People are opening their eyes and seeing. It's different now, from here on out.



For sure this has been recognized by the other side. The 1% understands what a threat looks like. The violent repression, the media manipulation, the attempts to subvert the movement, these have shocked people into paying attention to what's happening. But don't be fooled by the lack of headlines now. As the movement roots down into communities like mine we know there are plenty of obstacles in our path. But we also know what we can do, together.

#Occupy together; Spring is coming! Power to the people!

Photographs by me from the #OWS rally in New York City's Foley Square a couple days after the Zuccotti Park eviction

#OWS Occupies Times Square

Many thousands of people turned out Saturday night to bring the #Occupy Wall Street movement uptown to Times Square. While confused tourists milled about and police laid down a heavy hand with horses, motorcycles, and blocks and blocks of metal pens and barricades, thousands of people came out just before sunset to express their support to the rights of the 99% for economic (and social) justice.

The police response seemed to atomize the protest a bit, isolating a louder, angrier crowd around the military recruiting station from a more playful, music-playing "Occupation Party" crowd up near the TKTS booth. The police prevented feeder marches from joining the protests, and generally amped up an aura of explosive tension. After some abusive arrests earlier in the day at a protest inside a Citibank branch, the cops staged a confrontation with some protesters at the end of the Times Square event, arresting dozens. The protesters were engaged in nonviolent expression, and it's clear that the Mayor has ordered the police to limit that expression as much as they can get away with.

I love the sign above: "Decolonize Wall Street - Wall St. Is On Occupied Algonquin Land - Decolonize the 99%"


The Occupy Times Square Action was part of a global day of actions, with protests held in hundreds of cities in dozens of countries. Here's a sign expressing common sentiment at Occupy Wall Street Protests, and I gather, at protests world wide: "If Voting Could Change Anything, It Would Be Illegal - Join Us. We Are the 99%." If the fruit of all that excitement prior to Obama's election means anything, this is certainly a point up for debate.


And Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara made a welcome return visit to New York City courtesy of this red flag with the iconic Korda silhouette of the martyred hero. Of course my eye gravitates to red flags, but there was plenty of more middle-of-the-road sentiment present also. Considering this is a movement of the 99%, that road is pretty broad; and more power to it.

(Photographs by me; click on them to see them larger)

Lies! All Lies!

I was reading an article in the Times this weekend about Rep. Michelle Bachmann, presumed far right Republican presidential candidate. It treated her seriously, which I find remarkable in and of itself. Also remarkable were the comments on the Times' website, where outraged conservatives called her "highly intelligent" and accomplished. I think these are remarkable because to me, setting aside for the moment the quite real possibility that she is clinically mentally ill, I'm not sure I have ever read a statement coming from Rep. Bachmann that wasn't if not a complete and total lie, at least in large part full of dishonest intent and insinuation. What kind of person would vote for a liar like her?

Or consider Donald Trump, a wealthy buffoon who seems to be also toying with a run for President on the Republican ticket. While most serious prognosticators say that is unlikely, he's certainly all over the internet trying to make a name for himself as the last of the "Birthers," that is, promoters of the thinly-disguised racist lie that President Obama is somehow not actually an American citizen. Nobody seems to believe that Trump actually believes what he is saying, which is a reasonable argument because Trump's line of argument seems to have emerged untainted by actual facts like a giant turd directly from his ass. But nevertheless the man is making at least internet headlines just by spinning yarns. What kind of person finds a liar like him even slightly amusing?

President Obama announced his reelection campaign today, which gave me pause to remember all the hopes most of us placed on him after eight years of listening to Bush bumble (and lie) his way through a presidency that seems to have been nothing but a huge disaster for the United States and the world. Obama has of course fine-tuned the art of lying... or at least misleading and deflecting. I'll save for a rainy day my overall analysis of his presidency -- it isn't all bad news, considering -- but I'm saddened to announce that he is safely ensconced back in the ranks of lesser-evil Democrats. For me the last straw has been the utter atrociousness of his Middle Eastern policy and the facility with which he has wandered into a new war. But let's set aside any specific criticism or damning praise and say that we all know Obama is a lying politician -- just like the rest of them.

I googled "bible verses on lying" and got back a list of well over a hundred references, split between the Old and New Testaments, which means that most people raised with even a casual awareness of the Abrahamic faiths which so influence world culture are exposed to the idea that lying is a bad thing. And yet I would imagine that most people in most countries, our own certainly included, believe that their governments routinely, if not habitually, lie to us. Indeed some governments probably lie almost exclusively.

So my question -- and this time around I have no answer -- is how did this come to be? How do we, the lied-to, come to be so accepting of what we know are lies? I try very hard not to lie in my personal life. Little white lies torment me. The seductively manipulative power of lying is always offset by guilt and self disgust. I suppose lies of omission come easier, but it all seems so stressful and complicated. Who wants that?

Lying is of course a valued professional skill. In fact we have an entire industry -- it's called "marketing" -- which specializes in prettified lying. We beg to have our aspirations manipulated, which I suppose contextualizes at least American politics. But since I think politics is more important than breakfast cereal or new cars or poisonous medicines, I think it's fair to ask, why do we put up with this? What would happen if we didn't? And isn't it interesting that in politics, by my definition anyway, the "good guys" are the ones who can embrace the cynicism of knowing better and the "bad guys" are the ones who pretend that nothing's wrong?

What a mess! Welcome to Pinocchio culture! What kind of people are we?

The Rights of the People

I can't decide if this is the ultimate in subversive kitsch or a kind of authoritarian countersubversion. It's the decidedly un-hip pop group The 5th Dimension singing the American Declaration of Independence set to gloriously baroque pop music. Unfortunately, this is just a music track not an actual performance. But I've counted this as a guilty pleasure probably since it came out in 1970. On the one hand it's sort of an "Up With People" Rockwellian populist co-optation, something the entire family could smile warmly to as it aired on some television variety show without question. On the other hand, it's the fucking declaration of independence turned into a sort of glossy soul showtune, and the lines they choose to make the most memorable sound practically insurrectionary. Which I suppose it was. With hooks and harmony. I was reminded of it last night and tracked it down to youtube. I believe the original album track segued into "A Change Is Gonna Come."

I'm reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," which I strongly recommend to anyone who has the whitewash of childhood education too freshly coating their brains or to people like me so long from the school books the facts need a little freshening up. If an accurate teaching of American history proves anything, it's that American mythology needs to be approached with a questioning mind open to subversion. Who better than a soul group even your mother could love to start asking the right questions?

Can you surry? Do you picnic?

Election Day: Vote Against the Tea Party

Today is election day, 2010. Midway through President Obama's first term, the Democrats who swept to power only two years ago are widely expected to be savaged. While control of the US Senate is less in doubt, control of the House of Representatives is expected by most to pass to the Republicans. In local elections across the country, Republicans are expected to do well in gubernatorial races and local state house races, which could spell problems for the upcoming legislative sessions that will reapportion congressional voting disticts according to the recent US census. That census has population moving south: a number of northern states are set to lose representatives in favor of states like Florida and Texas. Republican gerrymandering of election districts could result in permanent damage to the allegedly representative nature of the House. (Interestingly a number of Republicans and teabaggers have come out against the constitutional amendent that provided for direct election of US senators; apparently across the board the right wing hates both Democrats and Democracy.)

I'm voting for the Working Families Party line here in New York State. The WFP is a progressive, independent party in the state with its own platform and basis of unity. In truth most of the candidates on the WFP line are also the Democratic Party candidates, though in the city council district I used to live in here in Brooklyn the WFP ran a candidate against the Democrats; a candidate who also happened to win. I think the WFP model is a useful one for this day and age: it allows people to the left of the Democratic center to organize around our own values, while passing electoral votes to the Democrats to defeat right-wing candidates that, frankly, need defeating.

This voting for the WFP line means voting for some candidates, like gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo, who are not particularly progressive. Indeed while Cuomo has taken a number of progressive positions (marriage equality among them), he promises to be a nightmare for organized labor, and here WFP has been forced into a corner to make a deal with the devil. According to NY State Law, third parties maintain their ballot line by getting a certain number of votes in state-wide contests. Thus WFP needed to endorse Cuomo to preserve its ballot status. Unfortunately running a candidate to the left of Cuomo would only be a losing symbolic gesture--and there are others already making that gesture. Fortunately voting for Cuomo does mean the probable defeat of our local teabagger candidate, the angry racist and anti-gay bigot Carl Paladino.

The WFP has also endorsed two US Senate candidates, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer. Gillibrand has been trying hard to impress liberals with her bonafides; in general I find her candidacy no more or less offensive than any other liberal Democrat. Charles Schumer is, unfortunately, deeply tied to the Israel lobby. He among the most hawkishly pro-Israel members of government...if Harry Reid is defeated by his racist opponent Sharon Angle, it's likely that Schumer will be up for the job of Democratic Senate Leader. Democratic performance in the Senate has left much to be desired this past season, as right-wing Dems hold a pivotal balance of power. However, given that the Senate will be controlled by either Republicans, newly juiced up with ultra-rightwing teabagger candidates, or by Democrats, at least paying lip service to some causes important to me, I believe that preventing a teabagger takeover of Congress is worthwhile. The Senate remains a den of thieves: its members are largely racist, warmongering, anti-gay, and anti-working class. But that's the job description of capitalism: My vote is against giving the far right legislative control. I wish a victory for the Democrats would imply that a progressive agenda had a snowball's chance in Washington. I don't think it does.

The election of Obama two years ago was a moment of hope. I mean that sincerely: for all of his failings, both the ones we knew about in advance and the ones that took us by surprise, something important happened. I believe that for a moment, the good guys won. And by good guys I don't mean the Democratic machine, and I don't think I even mean Obama himself. Obama is likable, gives a damned good speech, and....is, well, the President of the U.S. in all its contradictory glory and awfulness; he does terrible things; that's what Presidents do. It saddens me that Americans proved to be so politically unsophisticated creatures with such short memories; that the independent streak that Obama capitalized on has now turned on him with a bunch of dangerously crazy and ultra-rightwing candidates set to win their contests. I don't know, ultimately, who's going to win the war for America's consciousness: the progressive aspirations of the left or the fear and hatred and anger of the right.

It's so important to continue to dream of what could be possible: to organize for justice, for peace, for liberation, for economic justice, for a new collective reality. But sometimes you gotta look down in the gutter and pick a side, even if that means voting for a bunch of sell-out Democrats. It could most definitely get worse before it gets better. And if voting is ultimately not how transformational political change will be made it seems foolish to sit out the electoral game.

I've read leftists pissed off at Obama saying they won't vote for Democrats. I think that's, well, stupid. These leftists accuse people like me of playing the "fear card" by invoking the teabaggers, by invoking the threat of a Sarah Palin presidency as a manipulative cover for supporting Democrats. And my answer to that is that Sarah Palin should scare the fuck out of you. John Boehner? Mitch McConnell? Mainstream republicans who scare the crap out of me. And they are positively liberal compared to the teabag lynch mob coming up from behind. So yes, it is appropriate to play the fear card. They are a real threat. These elections, and the next ones, and the ones after that until there is some fundamental paroxysm in electoral politics, will not be won by a progressive third party. These elections will be won by Democrats or by Republicans. That's not the way it should be, but it is the way it is. Organizing in groups like the WFP is an important step in the right direction, but the bottom line remains that compromised victory in a deeply compromised country is about the best we can expect.

So get out there and vote...against the "tea party" takeover.

Which side are you on?

Blogger Transracial crucifies the current misleaders of the gay community in a scathing essay in the aftermath of the Republican senate win in Massachusetts:

"That Brown won should have come of little surprise to these LGBT “leaders” or their devoted fan base. After all, Spaulding, Queerty, Mixner and Co. practically cheer-led the former Cosmo-hunk to this critical triumph. Having officially turned on their president, these netrooters have conceded the greater good for their own shortsighted image-inflating. Well aware of the monumental consequences of a Republican win, Gay-stream media nevertheless continued their Dem-dissing and Obama-bashing with little concern for its election-day implications....The sobering truth is that the real enemies of LGBT Americans is actually their useless leadership — if they may be called that. Their uselessness is as vast as it is dangerous: Devoid of any real and realistic political platform. Corrupted by an unfortunate (and unprecedented) conflation of technology and ideology. Desperate in their embrace of short-term allies with little concern for long-term benefit (Cindy McCain, Ted Olsen — come on!). Unrepentantly racist and race-bating on the White side; complicit, silent and homo Tom-like on the Black. Steeped in anger whilst mired by impotence. And shamelessly borrowing from earlier civil rights movements with zero respect or understanding of what they were truly about."

The whole essay is thought-provoking, especially as we confront a revitalized right wing. This is not, ultimately, about Obama, it's about the war between progress and reaction in this country: the outcome of which is far from foretold. While I have pretty serious disagreements with much of this guy's blog, I give him credit for this challenging critique.

Hello Giant Egos, Bye-Bye Democracy

So NYC's allegedly-independent-former-Republican billionaire mayor and Democratic, openly lesbian city council president Christine Quinn have made a devil's bargain to go around the law and give themselves extra terms in office.

I think term limits are a terrible idea. But New Yorkers have defeated attempts to roll back these misguided laws, and both these politicians are on record previously opposing attempts to get around the voter's wishes. Tinpot dictator Rudy Ghouliani made a feeble attempt to extend his mayoralty for a third term in the aftermath of 9/11, and he was soundly and rightfully trounced for the suggestion.

Now a mayor who I didn't actually hate--until now--and a political careerist hack--who I have never heard anything good about--have decided that they are the annointed ones who can override democracy and lead the city out of its current economic crisis, which, oh yes, both have presided over. They will get the City Council to temporarily override term limits and allow them to run again.

Enough. The minute a politician says he or she is above the rules and indispensable is a minute beyond the time anyone should put up with them. It's time for Bloomberg and Quinn to go. This completely self-serving undemocratic attempt by them to railroad themselves into longer terms is blatantly and transparently corrupt. Buh-bye. Get out of town, dictators to be. Not only do you not deserve to run again in the next elections (next year!) but I think maybe you should just resign now for this disgusting attempted coup.

Dictatorship's biggest fan...

...is apparently George Bush. In a story I cannot believe is not the lead of every news program and paper in the country, George Bush told ABC News, today, three weeks into emergency rule--read, martial law--in Pakistan, that Pakistani dictator Musharraf, "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

Is the world gone mad? Dictator General Musharraf has just thrown his country's Supreme Court in jail! His forces have arrested thousands... merely for opposing him. This is democracy? President Bush must be arrested and charged with treason immediately. Our democracy is in mortal peril.

the expedience of democracy

So now a host of U.S. politicians are backtracking and saying establishing democracy was the wrong strategy in Iraq. Many--including Hillary Clinton--are saying Iraq Prime minister Maliki should be replaced. Not so long ago U.S. politicians were calling for greater democracy for the Palestinians: after Hamas's free and democratic election all of a sudden they announced they would only deal with (the unelected) Palestinian politicians from Fatah.

So after a decade and a half of American foreign policy apparently aligning away from dictators and claiming to support the establishment of democracy, now it returns to the expediency of supporting whoever it can get it to execute its dirty work.

This will shortly come into a third crisis as American puppet/dictator General Musharraf in Pakistan confronts the possibility of the return of two exile politicians who would surely oust him in elections.

But to my mind the lesson of this exercise in blatant hipocrisy is not to suggest that the U.S. recommit to establishing democracies in its client states.

I find it equally horrifying that who should be governing these other sovereign nations is at all the topic of conversations on the U.S. political scene. How arrogant that U.S. politicians and media offer their suggestions for who should be governing Iraq. How arrogant that they may get their way!

The best thing we in the U.S. can do for the Iraqi people is just get out. The second best thing we can do for the Iraqi people--and the rest of the peoples of the world--is replace our government, our system, with one committed to equality, progress, and freedom. Let's hear it for the revolution.