#THE ONLY NON MODERATE CHOICE I HAVE INSTITUTED A BOOK BANNING LAW AND A GENDERED BATHROOM LAW ARE YOU FREAKING OKAY

[veilfires]

Words cannot express how grateful I am for this post. When you live in a place where the entire structure is built intentionally against you, you’re looking at things like “mitigation” and “damage control.” You know you won’t win, so your goal is to ensure that you’re limiting the damage whoever does win can do- and sometimes that means voting for the White Moderate because the alternative is a literal evangelical fascist. And eventually, when you go to enough town halls and open meetings and people have seen your face, you start pushing the envelope and, as the other commenter said, running for things yourself!

This might be a hard reality for people living in places where they’ve quite literally never had to worry about a conservative winning to swallow, but it’s the reality for a lot of fucking people. And we don’t deserve to be called traitors or, in some cases, literally die because we’re doing what we can do. Our voice might be the only remotely liberal voice on the board or council, but it’s the first liberal voice in 50 years in a system literally designed against it- and it makes a real life difference. Decriminalization on the local level of weed in dark red states is proof of that. But every day I log into tumblr and see the same defeatist narrative. People living in conservative towns where the laws, regulations, geographical districts and actual infrastructure are quite literally hostile to the poor, people of color, women, queer, jewish, disabled, and other minorities need your support the MOST. Taking the stance that “they’re all the same” is quite literally killing us. Run for local office, support your local community voices, help campaign for the challengers! Do anything other than pretending that someone actively passing legislation that restricts human rights is the same as someone who doesn’t.

drives me up a wall living in a very very red district, like “no democrat is ever going to win any local election, let alone a real leftist” district, like “our school board members ran on who was the most anti-mask” red, like “I pass white supremacist signs on the way to buy weed” red

and being in the local leftist community and the guy who runs the anarchist book club and the lady who helps keep the warming shelters open and the people who marched on city hall when a local business was getting death threats for having a drag show are all members of a discord and we get on this discord and have frank discussions about how best to vote

the people who do the protests and the mutual aid and all the real work

going “okay, they’re both fascists, but this one lacks ambition and seems happy to just glide in the position” or “they both suck, but this one can be reasoned with if you frame it patriotically enough” like we don’t even have a democrat to vote for. we know what a vote is. we know what we hope accomplish with it. we know what it can do, and we know what it can’t.

and going from those discussions to here where people think that your vote is some kind of fucking??? enabling maneuver??? as if someone isn’t going to end up in that seat regardless of what you do???

we didn’t build this system, we just live in it. we’re just trying to survive. a vote isn’t a statement of your values, it’s not an endorsement, it’s not a marriage contract, it’s a strategic play you make to keep alive.

the biggest mistake I see leftists making is overestimating their own popularity. “well but everyone would be leftist if they just-“ no, stop, 1) you can’t possibly know that 2) everyone will not just