this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
20 points (100.0% liked)
Chat
7499 readers
34 users here now
Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why do you think these are the only options?
In terms of who to vote for in the U.S. presidential election, 3rd parties are spoilers. The U.S. voter is wasting their vote if they stay home or vote 3rd party.
Why do you think voting is your only option?
Feel free to enumerate other options.
Organization (protests, unions, joining a local political movement), education (yourself or others), pressuring candidates (call your reps, protests), mutual aid & voter enfranchisement (food banks, clothing donations, volunteering at polling stations, any effort to protect the homeless). All of these are options, and this is just what I can think of off the top of my head. If you'd like, here's a page with a gallery of 346 nonviolent protest tactics.
Much of America has become trained to think only in terms of a vote – a vote in a system that was deliberately unequal from its founding through to today – to the exclusion of all other action. To say this is suffocating to any effort to enact change is an understatement; it is self-defeating in the extreme, serves only to perpetuate the status quo or worse, and yet time and time again I see so many people who have spent next to no time thinking outside these terms.