I'm writing this on November 5, 2012. Less than 24 hours from now, polls will open and the 2012 election will be in full-throttle voting stage. (Of course, in many states and territories, folks have already been voting for weeks.)
And I suspect that some folks are already wondering--if this blog is supposed to be from a radical perspective, what's with the electoral politics? Elections are something that many radicals sneer at...a distraction at best from organizing, direct action, and mutual aid.
And elections are certainly something we fight over--bring up voting in a radical group, and watch the self-righteous cudgels come out. Some accuse their friends and comrades of being naive, co-opted, selling out, wasting their time on lesser-evilism. The retorts come right back--of defeatism, smug self-righteousness, willful ignorance of fundamental issues, tacit support for the worst possible candidates. A decontextualized quote from Lucy Parsons or Marx meets a similarly decontextualized (and often coopted) reference to suffragettes or civil rights activists facing police violence. And in the escalation, a lot of nuance and detail (which are kinda important in a complex world) get ground into the dirt.
My take? Voting is, quite simply, one arena in which we struggle to influence the social order. It's a very limited one, particularly in large scale contests between major-party candidates. But it's still an arena in which the fight plays out. I, for one, don't want to surrenderit to those who want a world built on domination and ruthless individualism.
The trick, though, is to engage that arena without allowing electoral work or electoral logic to take over. To reject the idea that essential and radical base-building must go on hold for GOTV--but also not to ignore an election that may have an impact on that base-building. To vote for and even work for at candidate while resisting any twisted claim that we should not criticize, confront, or organize against that candidate, particularly if he or she wins.
Not Only Candidates
Let's break that down a bit. First, and often ignored in discussions that somehow always gravitate toward presidential candidates, is the fact that elections aren't only about candidates. A year ago, Ohio labor activists were able to get a horrible anti-union law--which went even further than Wisconsin's--onto the ballot for a referendum. And they won--voters rejected the law. That was a huge victory that bolstered organizing in the state.
And that cuts the other way, too. Maryland managed to pass a state version of the DREAM Act last year--a big victory for immigrant communities, particularly youth. Right-wingers managed to get it, too, on the ballot. This Tuesday's results will determine whether many young immigrants across the state will have access to affordable tuition. And it will determine whether the movement for immigrant justice will take a hit or savor a hard-won victory.
I could write similarly about many other issues--GMO labeling, prison construction, "personhood," affirmative action--that are or have recently been on ballots. The referendum and initiative system is often highly problematic in many ways, but it's there. And it makes clear that a dichotomy between organizing and voting simply doesn't hold up. If you don't vote, you may miss the opportunity to win or defend a key organizing victory.
Sure, you may be saying, that's fine...but it's not the point. The issue is voting for candidates who are awash in corporate money. And perhaps that's what many folks mean when they disparage elections. But when I hear folks say that they're not voting because they don't want to give tacit approval to the system, I don't hear an asterisk. I hear unilateral disarmament on any issue on the ballot.
Fine. But What About Candidates?
But even if we're agreed there, what about the part of an election that gets the most time and column-inches and money--picking candidates for office? Problematic as referenda can be, this is where things get far more messed up. Between the money and the playing to a mythical rightward-moving "center" and the issues that never even get mentioned, I know that my own tone can get snarky and dismissive when I talk about contests for elected office, particularly at high levels.
Let's be clear-eyed about this. Anyone who expects Tuesday's election to put a radical in the White House has probably been listening to Glenn Beck. There are plenty of reasons not to vote for Obama or various other candidates who are somewhat better--or less bad--than their chief opponents. Rest assured that I, too, can go on at length about drones and other militarism, promotion of "clean coal" and fracking, the increased number of deportations, the continuing prison crisis, and much more.
So I'm not saying that people should vote Obama. But I also don't think that we can, in honesty, deny the fact that elections will impact the context in which we organize and live. The question of who holds office does, in fact, impact the balance of how much we're likely to be able to push forward for new victories vs defending what gains we've made.
This makes voting--as I said before--one arena in which larger power structures are contested and arranged. That may mean voting for the Greens or a similar party, or it may also mean voting for a less-bad candidate like Obama.
Regardless, it means holding onto the complex truth that voting is neither a substitute for organizing and long term work, nor a useless arena that should be dismissed. It's one of many arenas. After the 2008 election, I think that many people (and no, not only liberals) lost track of the first of these, and wanted a break from organizing after what was, in fact, a historic moment. And in the 2012 election, I fear that many of my comrades may be losing sight of the fact that voting does have an impact and shouldn't be ceded to the right wing.
Another trap that many, including many radicals, seemed to fall into after the 2008 election was in thinking that Obama was our friend or ally. It's understandable, really, for a number of reasons. But it led to a weird reluctance to push or criticize him. In several (but by no means all) movements, big or more confrontational efforts to push Obama to the left didn't come until 2010 or 2011. It was as if people didn't want to yell at their friend (particularly when he was being yelled at by racist and right wing crazies).
Far more appropriate is the frame I've heard offered by several voices recently. Mark Engler suggests that the left think of Obama as a better adversary. Rebecca Solnit quotes (but doesn't name) an undocumented writer who says that “The Democratic Party is not our friend: it is the only party we can negotiate with.” In both of these formulations, voting isn't an embrace of a friend--it's a strategic political choice in the context of larger and ongoing organizing.
Feet in both worlds
One of the fundamental challenges and tasks of being an effective radical is to be able to stand in two proverbial worlds--to be rooted both in the reality of the world in which we live and struggle now, and in the broader creative vision that inspires and drives us. Electoral politics is one part of that current reality. It's crucial that we don't let it consume our vision the way that it consumes the dominant political discourse. But let's also not surrender the electoral arena and, in doing so, make our lives and our organizing that much harder. -GB
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