I know it sounds like I’m feeding into some Doomer vibe, or like I’m giving up. I’m not, I will absolutely continue going to food drives and joining the occasional protest if I can, but my serious question I’ve been kinda struggling with is whether registration for voting is even worth it? I mean in my area there aren’t really 3rd parties, just a bunch of Jackass Democrats and Greedy Republicans yelling about how they’re more American. I suppose there are some referendums, but nothing that really helps people especially. I remember in 2016(I was a lib) I had told a friend that not voting creates a more dangerous situation for POC and LGBTQIA people that we know personally. The fucked up thing about what I said is that it kinda ignores the sad reality that Democrats often toss aside these groups as sacrifices for a few more votes. So Idk how to proceed. My potential vote for a Dem governor will make me feel worse than when I voted for Biden bc I know better. I can tell myself that I genuinely didn’t know better when I voted for Biden, I was a Dem who was willing to do anything to beat the Far Right, and I got what I wanted, just not what I expected. Sorry for the long Body Text, but as a USA comrade in a strongly Blue State, is voting worth anything? Thank you.
I gave some good money to Bernie then when I was 17 didn’t know better.
I see what you say but I want to argue it’s not worth much of our individual activism time/energy.
Voting is somewhat useless if it’s not organized strategically in a group which is what I suggest.
And our ‘democracy’ is very secure from what it means to actually be democratic. The maximum payout from voting as a form of activism is small because of this. That is why it not worthy of a large consideration.
Yes, if you’re actually organizing so much that spending an hour filling out a ballot based on some local union’s voter guide is gonna detract from that then you have a point. Also if you live in a state where voter suppression is much stronger, sure.
But I feel like that’s not a very common situation. I think when you factor in the impact that local elections have—Republicans are very successfully banning books about critical race theory currently by electing school board officials; sheriffs have an incredible amount of power with very little oversight and very few people vote on those races; local government officials can just sell your green space to bougie developers to further gentrification—if you factor in all that, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an activist too busy to copy a voter guide.