Comments on: An Open Letter on the 2012 Election to Anxious Liberals With Radical Friends

By: noah

noah — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:48:56 +0000

I don’t understand how talking to somebody about Brown or Baldwin will persuade them to vote for Obama. Every “radical” who I know who is not voting for Obama is still going to go to the booths and vote. They just aren’t going to choose a president, or are voting Green. Any suggestions for how to persuade those people, who I think make up the majority of radicals who won’t vote for Obama?

By: Maxwell John Love

Maxwell John Love — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 18:12:09 +0000

Voting is a gateway drug to other forms of political participation, like organizing. I don’t vote or do electoral organizing because I think it’s making a serious difference by electing a candidate, but it’s making a difference because we’re going to #ChangeTheDebate locally.

By: Angus Johnston

Angus Johnston — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:00:26 +0000

I agree with all of that, JB. I’m a big believer in the power of voting to do good [1], but I also recognize the limits and the tradeoffs involved, and I recognize that smart, decent, engaged people can come to different conclusions on that subject than I have.

If you’re at all committed to making positive change in this society, voting can never be more than a tiny fraction of the work you’re doing. (And if all you’re doing is voting, you’re not doing much.)

I’d rather work with the people doing good non-electoral organizing than spurn them over the choices they make during the fifteen minutes every four years I spend voting for president.

[1] http://studentactivism.net/2012/09/22/party-politics-the-post-office-and-the-common-good/

By: judith_butlertron

judith_butlertron — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 16:52:37 +0000

Recognise, as well, that your friend may not be voting because they are profoundly uninterested in what happens in a political system in which they have no desire to elect any of the contenders, and they may view your insistence that they ought to as your tacit approval of drone strikes, wiretapping, and militarised police brutality.

Consider the absurdity of holding the threat of civil rights losses over the heads of friends who’s political ideology makes them a target for FBI raids, police harassment, bat-wielding vigilante justice, and smearing in the media. To these people, you are asking them to pick which flavour they would like the boots to be that will kick their teeth in regardless.

The answer to making sure sex ed, birth control, and safe abortions are available to women is not to hang the fates of these women on whether or not your friend votes for the party that stood by and let those rights be taken by a minority of fundamentalists. The answer is to learn to provide those things. If you’re too busy to do that, why do you think your vote backed up by zero activism, zero education, and zero commitment to the political process your vote genuflects at will change anything?

I can see the benefit of voting the same way I can see the benefit of buying a lottery ticket, but consider that your friend might be more realistic than I am.