Saturday, January 17, 2004
Electoral politics…why bother?
Many of us whose politics fall to the left of the left were incredulous when we heard that Arnold Schwarzenneger was running in the recall election against CA governor Gray Davis. Ugh, another electoral politics campaign. Then we realized that after that, we’d have to sit through a mayoral election in San Francisco later in the fall. We started to wonder when it would all end, when shortly after the election, people popped out of the woodwork to run for President of the United Snakes. Do radicals need to be involved in these campaigns? When can we return to “real” political activism?
As we expected, Arnold won- largely, we hope, due to name recognition. There was some late campaigning against him by women’s groups such as Code Pink, but not enough to stop him. The Gropenfuhrer, who is known for his anti-women antics, is married to Maria Shriver, who is a member of the Kennedy family, which includes democrat politicians who have been very influential in US politics since the mid-20th century. The Kennedys are known for their relatively progressive politics, but apparently they sold out in order to support Arnold and his budget cuts that hurt the poor in CA. Interestingly, the only strong woman candidate was Arianna Huffington, who just a few years before had been an arch-conservative, but now had garnered significant lefty support. I kept wondering how we could possibly trust her.
In San Francisco, Gay Shame had been demonstrating against Gavin Newsom, the democrat candidate for mayor, since early in his term as supervisor. Gavin and his people came up with this horrible anti-homeless ballot measure, Prop. N, which greatly reduced people’s General Assistance benefits (so they wouldn’t spend the money on booze, drugs, food, clothes, or other necessities).
The green party’s Matt Gonzalez, also a member of the Board of Supes, came out as the left’s candidate. I kept wondering if we couldn’t do better than Matt. I had stopped voting after the last mayoral election, in which my candidate, gay supervisor Tom Ammiano, had not been elected (also, one of the poll volunteers looked at my ballot before he put it into the box!!). Tom ran again and I came back to the poll and voted for him, but Matt Gonzalez kicked his butt. I met Matt about 4 years ago at the opening party of his candidacy for supervisor. I was really into the peace and freedom party back then, and was super-pissed that he wanted to go with the more establishmentarian greens. He also struck me as kind of stuffy. He’s only like in his mid-forties, but when you hear him speak, he can only refer to his experiences as a lawyer…boring! At least he worked in the public defender’s office.
There was a huge, diverse group of people working night and day for Matt. I got like three phone calls urging me to vote for him, all between the night before the election and one hour before the election. One of the calls was from a wobbly who I’ve known for years. There is still a Queers for Matt listserv, but I hear that it is evolving into something else, as people have realized that they can keep working together on other issues (what’s next, Queers Against Bush?). I happened to be in the street near Matt’s campaign office just as the polls were closing on election night, and people had poured out of the office and into the sidewalk and street, chanting and cheering. You should have heard the interviews on Enemy Combatant Radio, from the Plant Trees guy to everyday people, talking as if Matt was the new Messiah who would turn SF into an ecological paradise. Come on!!
Well, Gavin somehow won, by only 5 or 6 percentage points. He had gotten a lot of support from prominent people in the democratic party. Maria Shriver was at his inauguration, as were the radical queers, but Maria was not protesting. You just can’t help wondering….What the fuck?! And by the way, SF also voted out the nation’s most progressive district attorney (that d.a. wasn‘t so into prosecuting cops who had killed people, but whatever). This means that outgoing mayor Willie Brown got both of his chosen “machine” candidates elected. Good for him, bad for us.
I was first introduced to the idea of not participating in electoral politics by my maoist friends. I thought it was kind of crazy, until I voted twice for this one ballot measure, and even though it passed both times, it still was not enacted until years later. There are all kinds of arguments against voting, but the one that I like best is that by voting, you actually give some kind of legitimacy to the government. Bearing in mind that the US government was founded by slave owners, women weren’t allowed to vote, etc, etc.
I think that progressive and “radical”activists work on electoral politics as a way to avoid doing real organizing. It is hard work to convince most people that they don’t need the state. They think that we can’t run our own lives- we can’t educate our kids, we wouldn’t be able to fix the roads and other “public works,” and we certainly can’t make decisions about things without leaders!! I live in a pretty “bad” neighborhood that has been largely neglected by the government in the city where I reside. People are pissed off, and they want their city council member to listen to their demands and get the beat cops to spend more time cleaning up the neighborhood. I can admit that I’ve only been to one neighborhood watch meeting because I was so overwhelmed by the amount of work that would lie ahead of me, if I am to stay in this neighborhood. These people’s homes are being broken into, their cars are being stolen, people are peeing in their yards, their property values aren’t going up, and they feel that it is not safe to walk around where they live! I’m just pissed at the number of cops hanging out in my neighborhood, and pissed at myself for not having formed stronger relationships with my immediate neighbors. I also don’t like it when cops jump over our 6-foot high fence and run through our yard.
Some of my friends say that they vote, but only on local ballot measures. They think that voting is actually effective. I think that there are too many apathetic and/or busy people out there for my friends to be able to make up for the folks who don’t vote. And the government can and does find ways around doing what the voters have told them to do. There have recently been some successful local campaigns that didn’t use voting, such as the campaign to stop a medical waste incinerator in East Oakland.
I say, let’s get out there and take advantage of the government if we have to- whatever makes it easier for us to organize! Get on the dole or social security, get Section 8 to reduce your housing costs, don’t work so much, talk to your neighbors, help out at the community garden or your neighborhood center, do a political show on the pirate radio station, feed and spay the neighborhood cats, share surplus Food Not Bombs finds with your neighbors, and get to know them! Organize around issues like incinerators, getting cops out of the ‘hood, having enough streetlights, building speedbumps, or whatever, and do it yourself!
Many of us whose politics fall to the left of the left were incredulous when we heard that Arnold Schwarzenneger was running in the recall election against CA governor Gray Davis. Ugh, another electoral politics campaign. Then we realized that after that, we’d have to sit through a mayoral election in San Francisco later in the fall. We started to wonder when it would all end, when shortly after the election, people popped out of the woodwork to run for President of the United Snakes. Do radicals need to be involved in these campaigns? When can we return to “real” political activism?
As we expected, Arnold won- largely, we hope, due to name recognition. There was some late campaigning against him by women’s groups such as Code Pink, but not enough to stop him. The Gropenfuhrer, who is known for his anti-women antics, is married to Maria Shriver, who is a member of the Kennedy family, which includes democrat politicians who have been very influential in US politics since the mid-20th century. The Kennedys are known for their relatively progressive politics, but apparently they sold out in order to support Arnold and his budget cuts that hurt the poor in CA. Interestingly, the only strong woman candidate was Arianna Huffington, who just a few years before had been an arch-conservative, but now had garnered significant lefty support. I kept wondering how we could possibly trust her.
In San Francisco, Gay Shame had been demonstrating against Gavin Newsom, the democrat candidate for mayor, since early in his term as supervisor. Gavin and his people came up with this horrible anti-homeless ballot measure, Prop. N, which greatly reduced people’s General Assistance benefits (so they wouldn’t spend the money on booze, drugs, food, clothes, or other necessities).
The green party’s Matt Gonzalez, also a member of the Board of Supes, came out as the left’s candidate. I kept wondering if we couldn’t do better than Matt. I had stopped voting after the last mayoral election, in which my candidate, gay supervisor Tom Ammiano, had not been elected (also, one of the poll volunteers looked at my ballot before he put it into the box!!). Tom ran again and I came back to the poll and voted for him, but Matt Gonzalez kicked his butt. I met Matt about 4 years ago at the opening party of his candidacy for supervisor. I was really into the peace and freedom party back then, and was super-pissed that he wanted to go with the more establishmentarian greens. He also struck me as kind of stuffy. He’s only like in his mid-forties, but when you hear him speak, he can only refer to his experiences as a lawyer…boring! At least he worked in the public defender’s office.
There was a huge, diverse group of people working night and day for Matt. I got like three phone calls urging me to vote for him, all between the night before the election and one hour before the election. One of the calls was from a wobbly who I’ve known for years. There is still a Queers for Matt listserv, but I hear that it is evolving into something else, as people have realized that they can keep working together on other issues (what’s next, Queers Against Bush?). I happened to be in the street near Matt’s campaign office just as the polls were closing on election night, and people had poured out of the office and into the sidewalk and street, chanting and cheering. You should have heard the interviews on Enemy Combatant Radio, from the Plant Trees guy to everyday people, talking as if Matt was the new Messiah who would turn SF into an ecological paradise. Come on!!
Well, Gavin somehow won, by only 5 or 6 percentage points. He had gotten a lot of support from prominent people in the democratic party. Maria Shriver was at his inauguration, as were the radical queers, but Maria was not protesting. You just can’t help wondering….What the fuck?! And by the way, SF also voted out the nation’s most progressive district attorney (that d.a. wasn‘t so into prosecuting cops who had killed people, but whatever). This means that outgoing mayor Willie Brown got both of his chosen “machine” candidates elected. Good for him, bad for us.
I was first introduced to the idea of not participating in electoral politics by my maoist friends. I thought it was kind of crazy, until I voted twice for this one ballot measure, and even though it passed both times, it still was not enacted until years later. There are all kinds of arguments against voting, but the one that I like best is that by voting, you actually give some kind of legitimacy to the government. Bearing in mind that the US government was founded by slave owners, women weren’t allowed to vote, etc, etc.
I think that progressive and “radical”activists work on electoral politics as a way to avoid doing real organizing. It is hard work to convince most people that they don’t need the state. They think that we can’t run our own lives- we can’t educate our kids, we wouldn’t be able to fix the roads and other “public works,” and we certainly can’t make decisions about things without leaders!! I live in a pretty “bad” neighborhood that has been largely neglected by the government in the city where I reside. People are pissed off, and they want their city council member to listen to their demands and get the beat cops to spend more time cleaning up the neighborhood. I can admit that I’ve only been to one neighborhood watch meeting because I was so overwhelmed by the amount of work that would lie ahead of me, if I am to stay in this neighborhood. These people’s homes are being broken into, their cars are being stolen, people are peeing in their yards, their property values aren’t going up, and they feel that it is not safe to walk around where they live! I’m just pissed at the number of cops hanging out in my neighborhood, and pissed at myself for not having formed stronger relationships with my immediate neighbors. I also don’t like it when cops jump over our 6-foot high fence and run through our yard.
Some of my friends say that they vote, but only on local ballot measures. They think that voting is actually effective. I think that there are too many apathetic and/or busy people out there for my friends to be able to make up for the folks who don’t vote. And the government can and does find ways around doing what the voters have told them to do. There have recently been some successful local campaigns that didn’t use voting, such as the campaign to stop a medical waste incinerator in East Oakland.
I say, let’s get out there and take advantage of the government if we have to- whatever makes it easier for us to organize! Get on the dole or social security, get Section 8 to reduce your housing costs, don’t work so much, talk to your neighbors, help out at the community garden or your neighborhood center, do a political show on the pirate radio station, feed and spay the neighborhood cats, share surplus Food Not Bombs finds with your neighbors, and get to know them! Organize around issues like incinerators, getting cops out of the ‘hood, having enough streetlights, building speedbumps, or whatever, and do it yourself!
Comments:
Post a Comment
