Guess what? Other forms of organizing and protest will also be opposed. And we should still do them.
If a movement is real and serious that organizing to vote in primaries is really not a big deal. Blue no matter who is really just a last resort and if you don’t want to then you should at least spoil your ballot.
PS anything you consider more effective than voting can still be done btw. Change is not an all or nothing (tho given the mindset around many here they should not be surprised when they really do keep getting nothing)
I’m aware that you see it that way, I don’t. Considering there’s no way to prove or disprove this, I tried to focus on actual political parties like the PSL and DSA, and their approach.
Sure, but if you are disparaging to voting then its not relevant what party it is: PSL, DSA, or any other.
My point is that voting is still a form of organizing and disparaging it means demotivating the broader coalition. I think you have a point we won’t vote our way out of it. Still we can minimize harm. My life would be a lot better with Mamdami as my mayor. I live in Texas and a disappointing Talarico is still living to fight another day, where Paxton means assured death.
It is kind of a point of privileged to be able to dismiss elections and just wave them away as ineffectual. Its not a total dismantling, but taking the
.mlroad of don’t bother because you wont get everything is a total surrender and has serious consequences. Not all of us have the privileged to be able to ignore that.I’m not disparaging voting. I disagree that voting is a viable vehicle to gain necessary change, and that funneling people into that without funneling them into organizing work is ineffective. Again, you continue to rely on strawmen by pretending the revolutionary standpoint is “don’t bother because you won’t get everything,” the point is that voting cannot gain socialism. Reforms can be fought for, and should be, but the actual realm reforms are fought for is in the organizing front. Accusing me of having a “privledged” stance for actually sticking my neck out and rolling my sleeves up to do organizing work is just a provacation.
Well maybe you can pass along that message to the rest of the
.ml. Lot of the rhetoric coming from there is exactly what J. Edgar Hoover would have wanted for leftist movements.This phrasing can be interpreted as disparaging voting. I wouldn’t say voting is the start and end of reform; just that it is part of taking action and being visible.
Well elections have very real consequences for many of us and we don’t get to pick to move somewhere to be more shielded from them. Someone who does disparage voting is someone who is leaving cards on the table and likely does not have a sense of urgency and have little need for minimizing harm, so they have no issue skipping primaries and general or the rest of the local races on that same ballot.
Its unfortunate you feel this is provocative as this is just a calm discussion in a forum. No showing for elections and leaving the door open for motivated republicans to take office is provocative to me.
Again, though, in this comment and every other comment, you are happier to invent a position to argue against than to actually address the points raised. I see this as needlessly divisive for the purpose of eliciting an emotional reaction, not an actual calm discussion. Again, I never once disparaged voting, I affirmed the primacy of organizing on the ground as the most necessary.
You’ve got more patience and skill than I do, Cowbee. OP’s moral framework feels impenetrable
If OP doesn’t want to grow, OP will not grow. You can’t force a viewpoint, you can only hope to lead the willing to it. Our task is to plant seeds and nurture sprouts, not to win debates in a bourgeois conception of the “marketplace of ideas.”
I know. That is why I talk with
.mls to have solidarity with the rest of us.Isn’t it difficult to push for solidarity while misrepresenting our points at every chance you get, by referring to a vague strawman of “.mls?”