Some people out there seem to be confused, but I always vote in every local and every national election for every office and every ballot initiative since I was 18 years old. Some of my greatest civil rights heroes have fought and died so that we can all vote and I honor their memory in the ballot box every single time.
To some of us, especially those of us like myself who have been scheduling secretaries for US senators, it often seems like a morally reprehensible choice between compromised corporate Democrats and fascist-minded Republicans. Where I live in California, I have the luxury of voting my conscience for president for third-party candidates that better align with my ideas of justice and equality.
But in any and every contested race, as my mom Mary Morello always said, we have to fight the fascist every which way we can, recognizing that even if there’s but an inch of difference between two candidates, there are a lot of vulnerable people who could be greatly harmed in that inch. So vote your ass off, but don’t just exercise your right to vote. Exercise your right to fight for, organize for, struggle for, and manifest the kind of world you’d like to really see without compromise and without apologies before, during, and after election day. And let’s stop the fascists every which way we can. Power the people.
Tom Morello lives in California.
You don’t.
Vote strategically, dumbasses.
Yeah, he even explicitly makes that clear. It’s a pretty good take.
This is the vital detail. By all means vote your conscience if you live in a safe state. And his criticism of conservative Democrats is entirely justified.
But if you live in a battleground state, please do whatever you can to block Republicans, even if it requires holding your nose.
Even in battleground states, you can vote in primaries, for school boards etc. If the choice comes down to a corporate shill vs. a Nazi, you should always vote against the Nazi, of course, even if the alternative is also unpalatable.
And educate people on ranked-choice voting.
Agreed! And open primaries, while we’re at it. These are all simple things that make our democracy more democratic and less prone to corruption and polarization.