My election post.

"The rumor that you can’t take on city hall was started by city hall." -Audre Lorde

This week my household collectively voted for a third party in the presidential election.¹

We also opted to participate in a coordinated movement in our state, using this voter guide, to write in “Palestine” for three of the Democratic representatives running for re-election, specifically for our Democratic U.S. Representative, our Democratic Senator and the incumbent Superintendent. Both my spouse and I spent the year calling and emailing our senator and rep; each has chosen not to represent us and the majority of Democratic voters. One of them attended our local, small town Pride event last June and approached her directly, telling her of my visits to Palestine this year and asking her to call for a ceasefire. She was dismissive and told me that I didn’t represent all of her voters. I told her that wasn’t my job—it was hers!²

I’m not writing this post to convince anyone to do what my household did. Unlike the Democrats, voting purity is not how I measure others’ political activation or camaraderie. I am from a swing state and now I live in a solid blue state. Multiple people in that swing state have contacted me asking for my opinion on how to vote, and I’ve told them my own decision but opted not to shame them into doing what I decided to do. I am in community with lots of people who are excited for and actively canvassing for Harris. When I went home to rural Pennsylvania last month, I saw Trump signs aplenty. I have made the decision not to campaign for Harris (and I view vote swapping as just a campaign for Harris in sheep’s clothing) but I get why people I love will vote for her.

To be honest, the reason I started to write this is that I saw the umpteenth post in my feed yesterday by a wealthy, white, queer person who I follow asking me to vote for Harris because she is the only hope for them as a queer person. I’m not going to cite any of these posts because the last thing I’m trying to do right now is dunk on my own queer people. If white, wealthy, queer people want to vote for Harris, go for it, but what I hope to interrupt here is the pattern of folks campaigning for Harris with a specific script that pits the language of queer allyship against voting with Palestine in mind, and it is this repeated script amongst the liberal voters that I want to interrupt. That script goes against what I have learned, not just from my work with Palestine, but from BIPOC queer folks who continue to teach me how to better understand my own colonized gender, who continue to teach me how to better parent my little kid in a gendered and heteronormative world, and who continue to call me into joyfully queer abundance when I tend toward scarcity. There are three typical ingredients to these posts that I’ve seen from resourced, white, queer liberal folks:

• binary thinking

• the speaker using fear to suggest they are uniquely at risk compared to the needs of other marginalized folks

• the suggestion that we can only organize under “friendly” political powers OR the statement that it is easier to organize under Democrats

Let me go through these arguments…

The binary of two parties…

I have never voted third party in a presidential election because of rhetoric like this. I have been involved in movement work toward the liberation of Palestine for eleven years and I have voted for a pro-Palestine candidate zero times. Those of us in this movement know that Zionism is a vital component to the funding of our political structure³ and finding a viable pro-Palestine candidate is almost impossible in American politics. Israel is a mirror for the United States, and the political structures of the U.S. want to look in the mirror and see something they love; so, American politicians love Israel.

The first argument usually goes: “I don’t like binaries but we are stuck with a binary system right now.” This is binary thinking: to say that the binary is essential to the system in question. We lose all imagination when we think within a binary. I heard one of these arguments as “I wish there was a more robust third party system” — how does that person imagine a third party becomes politically viable when no one is permitted within the in group to vote third party? We will never stop being a two party system until people vote outside of the two parties.

Focus on my rights, not theirs.

Long ago I made a sign for a protest with a quote from Audre Lorde: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” We used to keep it in the car, no joke, in case we stumbled upon a protest (which, when we were living on the southside of Chicago, would happen!) I brought that sign to so many protests I can’t count them, because it is a compass for me in my very act of protest—I’m never at an action to protest a single issue, because we do not live single issue lives.

The idea that you either care about Palestinians OR queer people is a false dichotomy. When people suggest that, it tells me they don’t understand the movement for Palestine in its fullness. (And it is obviously pinkwashing and a blatant erasure of trans and queer Palestinians.) The movement toward a liberated Palestine is deeply intersectional and inherently cross-movement oriented.

Palestinian author, Ghassan Kanafani, said “Imperialism has laid its body over the world, the head in Eastern Asia, the heart in the Middle East, its arteries reaching Africa and Latin America. Wherever you strike it, you damage it, and you serve the World Revolution…the Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever [they are], as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.”

When we make movement toward a free Palestine, we are interrupting empire, we are casting down capitalism, we are disavowing white supremacy. The movement for a free Palestine, is the movement for everybody’s lives. I wouldn’t have cast the vote I did if I didn’t believe that it was also a commitment to my queer community, because I believe that our liberation is tied up together.

Any time someone makes you think that their liberation is more important than another’s, that is when you know they aren’t truly into liberation.

The idea that 1) you have to have a “friendly” in power to organize, OR 2) it’s easier to organize under Democrats…

I was texting last month with a friend who is Palestinian and lives in “Israel” (this bifurcated group of Palestinians are often called ’48 Palestinians.) ’48 Palestinians are theoretically allowed to vote in Israeli elections, since they hold Israeli citizenship.

I asked my friend her advice on my vote, and she replied via voice memo with laughter, saying “…we have a saying in Arabic, which translates “from shitty to shittier.”⁴ She didn’t envy me.

“Obviously you wouldn’t vote for Trump…but would I really want to support Kamala? Especially after what she said today [about trans people]⁵…I don’t know. I don’t vote in this country anyway so I don’t really practice my ‘Democratic right’ of casting a vote and having it heard and having any kind of impact for my voice, so I wouldn’t know…”

Of course she doesn’t vote. She knows that the system is rigged against her, so why would she participate in it? But she is one of the most politically activated friends I have over there—and that’s saying something for Palestinians. She, unlike many Americans, is not waiting around for a “friendly” in power to organize. Palestinians have long known that you don’t wait for permission from those in power to make change. Of course you don’t.

I can’t get this fact out of my head: after the 2020 political uprising where suddenly a bunch of white people realized that Black lives matter, Costco put a bunch of books by Black authors on its shelves. When Biden was elected, Costco sent back a bunch of those books!⁶ In Biden’s America, educational resources on anti-racism were no longer a financially viable commodity. The number of abortions in the U.S. rose when Roe v. Wade was overturned. Not because there was better access, but because people were activated to speak up for, normalize, and fund abortions. Vote now, organize later does not work. People organize when they consider the work to be an emergency, and Democrats have proven that they are very good at teaching people that the fire at your neighbor’s is not worth attending to as long as your house is not currently engulfed in flames. I do think we are more likely to fall asleep in a burning house under a Democratic president.

I’m not going to entertain the idea that Trump will be worse on Gaza. It is insulting to the pain and loss that has been endured by Gazans and Palestinians worldwide. And as for Muslims in the U.S., I’ll let this woman speak for herself:

So, about my vote…

I didn’t vote for a third party thinking that the person I voted for would win the election. It’s as simple as this: I can’t be accountable to the Palestinians I’m in relationship with and vote for VP Kamala Harris. Maybe that’s not your political community, but it’s mine. I’m not trying to “help”⁷ Palestine—I have a responsibility to it.

Just as I was finishing this post today, I popped on instagram to find somebody had said it better. 😅 One of my new internet friends, BIANCA MABUTE-LOUIE, posted this on instagram regarding her decision to vote outside of the “duopoly” and Bianca says it better than I did:

[The Dems] hold fundamentals like immigrant, reproductive, and trans rights hostage. Why would they codify these rights if they are the sole reasons many of us continue to vote them in? There is no protection under the current system. We only have each other.

Indeed, what we have is each other. And that is actually all we need. When did we start to believe the lie that we needed politicians to make change in the first place?

You know what I do when I get really scared?

• I get less imaginative and I use binary thinking.

• I start to think that my needs operate in a vacuum, and that I am alone in my risk and vulnerability.

• I start to appeal to people who have power over me, thinking if I just get on their good side, I can convince them to change their minds about hurting me.

I cast my vote this year and I was not afraid. I’m not afraid of what will happen on Tuesday. I am ready to organize on November 6th, 2024⁸, no matter who is elected. It will only change my strategy who becomes the president, but it will not move me to inaction.

The sign of many protests: outside Israeli consulate (2019); BLM protest in Sunnyvale, CA (2020); Chicago Women's March (2017)

We might be tired, but we will not grow weary, because we need not wait for November 6th to find out that we have each other.

And that is actually all we need.

1. Though we are likely more aligned politically with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, we voted Green Party because we believe it is the third party option that could reach the 5% threshold that will apply federal funding toward Green Party candidates in future elections, one teensy step toward getting us out of this duopoly.

2. Another prescient story from this year’s Pride: after I told the table rep from our county Dems that, as a Democrat, I wasn’t interested in speaking with them because of their lack of action around Palestine, that rep followed us, past multiple booths as he shouted, “thanks for electing Trump!” and my spouse shouted back: “this event is called ‘Pride,’ not ‘shame!’”

3. Note that Christians United for Israel is in the top five lobbying groups.

4. Isn’t that so much better than “lesser of two evils”?

5. This was the day that this interview came out, where Harris chose not take a stand on trans medical rights. Over the past month I spent some time in my home state of Pennsylvania and yeesh, that gross ad was everywhere! And yet that ad had me wishing, not for the first time, that the Democrats actually were who Trump says they are (i.e. abolitionist, leftist, socialist people handing out free healthcare to incarcerated trans folks). As my friend living in apartheid Israel alluded to, Harris’ non-committal response was actually harmful to trans Americans. I know she likes to say how she’s performed gay weddings, but I’m not impressed with her record on trans rights.

6. Unfortunately — it is stuck in my head! Can anyone find this citation? I really want to cite this but my internet searches and my feeble memory are failing me.

7. “If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” -Lilla Watson (Murri visual artist and activist)

8. I feel at peace with this in a way that is totally counter to how I felt on November 6, 2016. I was one of those progressives who woke up to the total shock that Trump became president. I had been asleep at Obama’s wheel and I was jerked awake by Trump’s election. Now, I am not afraid, but that doesn’t mean I have always had the clarity of mind and movement that I do now. It’s ok to be afraid. We all get afraid.