Im just gonna copy and paste something that made me smile. From Michael Becker who shared from @prisonculture - 1. Voting will not uproot oppression. Only social movements can do that. 2. Voting is harm reduction. 3. Voting is one tool in a larger toolkit to engage politically. And being an engaged political person is a good thing. 4. Voting doesnt make you special and it doesnt make you a sell-out. 5. Not voting doesnt make you special or a more radical person or a bad person. Those choices just mean you voted or didnt vote. 6. Dear fellow Black people, our ancestors did not die to vote. They died fighting for their liberation. There is a real difference.( This I dont agree with, Black folks did die regeistering and voting) Finally stop the handwringing and all of the angst and as Nikky Finney would say: stand in the shoes of whatever choice you make. FIN. But the this was also something to consider, a comment on this post- Brad Wood Compared to most fb statuss today, this is refreshing. But I must object to #3--that voting is a good way to engage politically. Really, there is no such thing today as voting--you arent choosing your representatives--they have already been chosen for you--your job is to pull the lever on option 1 or option 1a. Voting is not an *active* process. It shouldnt even be a verb--at least when talking in the language of engagement. What voting does accomplish is to stamp legitimacy on our political system. Why is it that we scoff at voting in a place like North Korea but even people on the left say to go ahead and vote for the lesser of two evil capitalist masters in the US? Legitimizing this political system is not harm reduction. Social movements should not get out the vote--but keep the vote at home---with the aim of reducing electoral participation to 10 or 15% tops.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 20:17:43 +0000