Protest and politics
We need both
At last! At last! It's IOWA CAUCUS DAY! FUCKING FINALLY! Two reminders are in order:
- Bernie's my choice, just like he was in 2016, and also I think Elizabeth Warren is pretty awesome. If you're a reader caucusing in Iowa, you should caucus for whomever is viable in your precinct of those two. It's imperative that leftists and progressives forge a popular front to prevent the nomination of Joe Biden or the preposterously unqualified Pete Buttigieg.
- This is one of those rare days where you'll get multiple newsletters from me! You're reading the regular edition, which lands in your inbox at 9:30 am Mondays and Fridays. Because today is a landmark day, you’ll get another edition tonight, once we have a clearer idea of who’s won the caucuses. This is also a reminder that this year, three sets of results will be reported. From the Vox explainer I linked to:
The pre-realignment vote total: This is the initial tally of how many people prefer each candidate at each of the more than 1,600 individual caucus sites (added together for a statewide total). Basically, it’s who got the most votes the first time around.
The final vote total: After the first tally, any supporters of a candidate who got less than a certain threshold of the vote (15 percent in most precincts) can shift their support to another candidate. Candidates who are below the viability threshold are eliminated as “nonviable,” and a new and final tally is taken. So this is who got the most votes after a reshuffling.
State delegate equivalents: The final vote total at each caucus site will then be used to assign each viable candidate a certain number of county delegates. Then those county delegate numbers will be weighted to estimate their “state delegate equivalents” (how many delegates each candidate will get at the Iowa state convention).
Okay, on with things. Reminder that if you think this newsletter is awesome, you can share it with your friends! And if someone shared this newsletter with you, you can sign up below. Thank you!
Not gonna lie: I was pissed and despairing Friday. I was pissed and despairing through the weekend, and as I write this I’m still pissed, still full of despair. Enough that I tweeted an all-timer about about getting blind-ass drunk, walking into the Atlantic Ocean, and never coming back. Which in turn made friends ask if I were, y'know, okay.
I'm not, in fact, okay, and neither am I going to do anything stupid. And you know what? It's okay to not be okay! It's okay to feel anger, and rage, and despair, and sadness! Something really precious and irreparable got broken on Friday by Republicans, just like they've broken so many other things over the past 20 to 30 years. It's absolutely proper to have all the feelings you're going to have about this.
Matter of fact, I'm weirded out a lot by people whose reaction after this pathetic act of moral and legal cowardice is simply to dust themselves off, and exhort people to not feel despair. To simply act as if we'll get them next time, as if this is just a run-of-the-mill political defeat, instead of a wholesale desecration of the rule of law.
I get it: despair can be enervating; it can be paralyzing. We can't afford paralysis right now; we also need to respect how people feel. With all that said, here's where I’m coming from. This is why I was angry and despairing Friday, and all weekend, and why I still feel that way this morning.
Let's start with this:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
That’s the First Amendment; the most important one, because it makes everything about America that matters possible. Everyone focuses on freedom of speech, or freedom of religion, and then forgets about the most important part of it. Namely: “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Translated: the right of the people (meaning you and me) to hit the streets and protest the fuck out of some outrageous shit being carried out.
In other words, to do shit like this.
And shit like this.
Over and over, day after day, for as long as it motherfucking takes for our grievances to be settled. If that’s two days, two weeks, two months, doesn’t matter. There’s no limit on that right.
By all means: vote. Participate the fuck in campaigns, at every level. And protest.
So, here's the thing: I think the worst thing we did was turn our attention from protest to politics, because what we needed to do was both: protest and politics. The two are inextricable. Again: elections are important. But they’re not the only thing, and I’m sorry, but I’m finished going along with people who want to act as if they are. We can do two things at the same time; protest and politics aren't mutually exclusive. But we act as if they are!
Remember the first Women's March? Remember how we all crashed down on airports at the drop of a dime when the first Muslim ban was issued? We have got to get back to that. I get it: maintaining that level of intensity wasn't possible, because we all have lives. We channeled our energies into other things -- our communities, supporting local direct actions, that sort of thing. We took back some state houses, we took back Congress! These are all good things!
Now it's time to ratchet our protests back up.
From now on, if your politics have no space for mass protest and mobilization on an ongoing basis, they are useless and complicit to me. We have to vote because we need to show the world we reject Trump and the Republicans, and our efforts to beat them are amplified by a vote that shows that rejection.
We also need to hit the streets to show the world that we’re not going to take this bullshit lying down. We don’t value protest nearly enough. We’re happy to share pictures and video of other people protesting in other places, but here? Nope. We treat it as an inconvenience and an annoyance, as opposed to what it is: the greatest single weapon we’ve got, and the flip side of our votes.
Voting is important. But shorn of the power of protest, it’s meaningless. Lots of dictatorships and autocracies have voting, legislatures, elections, and all the other trappings of democracies. But without the power to protest, that's all they are: trappings. A trap into thinking you have power and representation, when in fact you have neither.
I’m simplifying things to make a point. We need to work our protest muscles again, right now. We can’t wait. And we certainly can’t wait for Democrats.
This is on us. We’re the people we’ve been waiting for, and we’re the ones who’ll make things right.
I’m serious: we’re the “grownups”. Nancy Pelosi isn’t going to lead “the resistance”. Chuck Schumer isn’t. That’s not a slam on them, it’s just that that’s not their role here. Their role is to oppose everything Republicans do (and they’ve largely failed at it), not protest.
Look: we’ve got to get comfortable and used to the idea that shit’s fucked up, shit isn’t normal, and that the only way we get back to where we can start holding people accountable is by peacefully assembling and petitioning for our grievances to be redressed. I'm for getting in everybody's face. Democrats just happen to be the people who will listen to me and maybe redress my grievances. Republicans won't.
That doesn't mean we don't protest Republicans. But I'm fed up with this attitude that we shouldn't confront Democrats because that somehow lets Republicans off the hook, and that people who demand better from Democrats are somehow absent from civic participation because the only civic participation that matters is electoral. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. dismissed this line of thinking in his Letter from Birmingham Jail; it's extremely revealing that so many people who venerate him continue to embrace it.
This isn’t a time for “unity”, a time for “coming together”. People who are asking you to do that are asking you to be okay with what’s going on. They’re asking you to be cool with concentration camps and autocracy and corruption. To be complicit right along with them, because they lack the moral courage and spiritual fortitude to do what's right. To be, in effect, sheep willingly led to the final slaughterhouse.
Fuck. That. I will not go down that way.
I'm going to close by quoting one of my mentors, a person who by his conduct and speech helped learn so much and gain a ton of clarity over the past few years. Reggie Hubbard said this on Friday, as I raged and despaired:
"It is not hyperbolic to feel that a piece of our Republic died this afternoon. With the inability of the Senate to even have the semblance of impartiality, the battle lines have been drawn. They didn't do their job, so we must take theirs. For those of you feeling anger, rage, sadness, disappointment, I see you. Take time to work through those emotions because your government did betray you.
“But if you believe in people power and have no desire to live in the society that just revealed itself, it is within our power to change it. It is our obligation and our destiny to fight back with ferocity and focus. With every death there is an opportunity for rebirth, and so it is for us in this situation. Remember this feeling now and channel it toward creating connection with like minded individuals so we can build the future we deserve, one better than our disappointing present circumstance."
I feel rage, and despair, and disappointment. I expected better from folks. I expected Republicans to acquit; I did not expect, despite the evidence, Democrats to acquiesce in the end, and go back to acting as if everything is normal and will be fine in the end.
But that’s their choice. My choice is to fight back with ferocity and focus. Join me if you want.
I love all of you, and it is only with love that we will triumph. I love you all because I believe in a love that fights for peace and justice, rather than settling for the absence of conflict. Love that is just. Love that changes us, so that we can change the world.