Electoral politics are not politics of transformation.
We need to vote anyway.
In recent weeks, a few of you have asked me about my thoughts on the U.S. election. I’ve been relatively quiet during this election cycle. Back in 2016, I was actively canvassing, making calls, and posting on social media, and the idea of Trump occupying the White House was enough to get me knocking on doors in Pennsylvania and attending bipartisan fundraisers. I won’t relive the trauma of that election here, but the miasma of the ensuing four years was enough to make me louder and more active and more connected to electoral efforts in 2020.
This year, I’ve been watching the election with a sense of unease, rather than investing myself in it. It feels like there is an underlying violence and disquiet to the entire proceeding. And my work lies aside from electoral machines, anyway. Pushing for transformation in the realms of human rights, humanitarian aid, migration, climate, and transnational social justice isn’t necessarily a challenge unlocked in electoral politics, which are often more focused on power consolidation and compromise. The past few years have shown us that all our playbooks and frameworks aren’t fit for purpose to meet the myriad intersecting social and political issues we are confronting, and we need to be building new forms of narrative power, leadership, and distributed communities. The general takeaway?: The answer to transformation isn’t found in elections, it’s found in us.
But in a year in which nearly 70 countries around the world have been going to national polls, that takeaway is glib — not the least in the U.S., whose elections affect not just those of who live within its borders, but in every corner of the world. And so the U.S. electorate is influential in creating the conditions in which we do the work of social change. Our votes matter. (And if they didn’t, would so many people be trying to take our votes away?)
So, with ten days to go, I’m investing in this election. I am volunteering to cure ballots and textbank. And I will be voting early in New York State for the Harris/Walz ticket on the Working Families Party ballot.
There are many reasons to shy away from the Harris campaign. First and foremost is the Biden-Harris administration’s complicity in Gaza. We are supporting and financing a genocide. It’s that simple. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been murdered and maimed and displaced with our tax dollars. And it’s enraging that Harris won’t commit on the campaign trail to stopping the provision of weapons and financial support. The racism inherent in this stance runs deep, and I completely understand the voters — particularly Arabs and Palestinians — who will leave the presidential line blank in their ballots because of this. People who are shaming them for their stance are not holding their own privilege to account.
(I won’t even consider Jill Stein’s candidacy here, because of reports of her support for Syria’s Bashar Assad, her refusal to drop out even if Dems did secure an arms embargo and ceasefire, and the Green Party’s lack of investment in grassroots power and local elections over the past two decades in the U.S. Her candidacy is a potential spoiler leading to the reelection of Trump. As much I will not blame any affected person who is hesitating on Harris, I will resent any person holding privilege who votes for Stein and paves the way for a Democratic party collapse.)
The second reason is the Biden/Harris record on immigration. Our modern border industrial complex has been evolving since 1994, when the Clinton administration set up new draconian immigration deterrence policies. But it worsened significantly during the Trump administration and the Biden-Harris administration has not done enough to restore a humane immigration and border policy; in fact, conditions have deteriorated. It’s shocking to listen to Harris, the child of Jamaican and (like me) Indian immigrants, advocate for heightened militarized border and interior security, and tell immigrants they are not welcome here.
The third is how the Democrats have handled this election. They’ve ignored progressive and left voters in so many ways, instead throwing their lot in with Republicans, with Harris even going so far as to promise a “bipartisan council of advisors.” Which Democrat or progressive is asking for this? And this is while Democrats are following the playbook of top-down messaging over local engagement. This country spends so heavily on elections — so many billions of dollars, so many months of blather — yet the Democrats often lack sufficient community engagement and grassroots organizing. This hardly inspires confidence in the party’s leadership.
So with all this, why am I voting (now rather full-throatedly) for the Harris/Walz ticket? I have a simple calculus: I believe it’s vital for those of us who have the privilege to vote strategically to do so to keep Trump out of office.
As Angela Davis said recently, we don’t engage in electoral politics for individual candidates. There are no heroes or saviours (nor should there be.) We do so to expand the available space for mass struggles to take place. Our intersecting issues are driving us toward movements for trade unions, women, working-class people, transgender people, pregnant people, and minoritized communities of color, to fight for rights, opportunity, health, and education, and for the health of the planet and all the living beings on it. We need new forms of leadership, infrastructure, and economic equality to foster transnational movements that aim for a more livable planet where people can move freely.
We will have a desperate time trying to organize toward these goals under an authoritarian presidency, let alone achieve them. There have been countless pages written and podcasts issued over the past few months of what a second Trump presidency would mean to this country and to the world, and I won’t repeat these arguments here. But there are analogies and lessons all around the world of what movements and civil society are up against under authoritarian rule, and a second Trump presidency lays a path toward the “prosperity and power for me, death and dystopia for you” worldview of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and their ilk.
And if we need something affirmative, there are some positive aspects to Harris’ campaign. The first is her unalloyed support for reproductive justice, at a time when we desperately need this. The second is the existential threat of climate change, which her platform actually addresses. Finally, her identity is another. No, representation alone is not justice, and a Black and brown woman who supports genocide is no better for being marginalized herself. But Harris’ blended family is more representative of contemporary U.S. families, the kinds the GOP rails against as un-American. And this country should acknowledge the Black women who have engaged in tireless and thankless organizing over the decades, who swiftly organized in the moments and days after Harris’s candidacy was announced. And then there is the institutional pushback against Harris: For the first time in nearly 40 years, the Washington Post and the LA Times have refused to endorse a presidential candidate. This is partly complicity and cowardice, but it can’t help but feel like it is tied to Harris’ identity as a woman of color. And I feel that on my skin. None of this makes up for her support of genocide and militarization. But the pushback feels personal.
I didn’t write this piece to shame anyone into voting for Harris, or even to encourage anyone. I just have been hearing from people who are angry and paralyzed by the US government’s current wave of imperialist violence and have been looking for dialogue on this. And I also know many people who are saying, “Let it all burn down. Then we can get to rebuilding from the start.” That’s one one way of looking at it. The question for me, though, is: Who gets sacrificed in the burning? (It’s always the poor and marginalized, isn’t it?)
So my offering is this: I believe driving meaningful change with Trump in power will be incredibly difficult. And while I don’t see electoral politics as the ultimate solution — it’s just one part of a larger landscape — I do believe we need social protections and governance mechanisms to underpin our fight for social progress. So I might be wrong, or I might be betraying a greater cause, but I’m voting in a way that I believe sets a wider stage for community organizing, cultural change, and narrative power.
Early voting starts today in New York, and I’m walking over to my polling station to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz under the Working Families Party banner. And the day after the election, or whenever we know what the election results will be — for there are no guarantees anymore — should they win, I will get back to work pushing as hard as possible for justice and equity.
I will do so, regardless, no matter the election outcome. It will just be that much more possible under them.
