#141 - Voting Uncommitted, but Still Committed to Voting
or: what to do when nothing feels okay
I haven't been writing lately.
Which is usually my first sign that somethings wrong.
The times I find myself avoiding it most is when I'm not ready to face myself or my feelings.
But that's not what's happening this time. This time it's much more like...the world?
(Like, personally? I'm actually doing okay. I've been going through this whole tension with growing up and coming to understand myself as a Person In The World and not some abstract image I'm desperately trying to control. Which, ya know, has made writing personal essay's uhhhh trickier in general as I become more discerning about what I want to share now that I'm no longer processing my life via writing about it. I'm getting used to just living it instead of analyzing it. I'm still working on being reflexively positive rather than negative about life--because I think I've been falling in love with Life and my speech patterns often fail to reflect that.)
Everything feels like a miracle when I stop to think about it long enough.
(Even just going to the grocery store – a bounty! Unparalleled in history!)
But I'm having a lot of resistance to writing about the world right now.
Because it's all so horrifying, and I feel woefully under-qualified to capture the despair.
Ignoring it is not an option, and it feels gauche to me when people mention it in order to move on. There is something deeply wrong with feeling the need to alleviate guilt before continuing to live life. But that's where we are. That's what our government has decided will be normal now.
Shit's bleak man.
The president used a slur during the State of the Union and then still, pundits rushed to gush over how well he was able to string sentences (that were written by someone else) together. Like, the bar is lower than I ever thought possible and he still can't clear it, actually!
The UN finally got a resolution passed to declare what Israel is doing a genocide, and he turned around and gave more weapons to Israel. He even tried to keep it a secret!
The FBI is knocking on doors over peoples pro-Palestine Facebook posts. Facebook may have installed spyware onto people's phones after the EU tanked their ability to scrape all of our data btw. They also "underwrite" NPR so, don't expect to hear about it on your favorite liberal news™ station!
And the other guy running for president is a multi-convicted rapist, fraud, racist, sexist, monster of a man. Who no one has held accountable for his many, many crimes. Including, but not limited to: treason.
(Which I was definitely led to believe we took super seriously in this country!!!!)
On Tuesday, I will be voting uncommitted in the Democratic primary because I cannot believe that Joe Biden bypassed the democratic process so egregiously. And I've felt that way since last year when they skipped the debates!!! The reveal of his ability to aid and enable genocide has been a shocking escalation and I REFUSE to endorse him.
(My best friend keeps making the excellent point that it's fucking weird how our government categorizes both weapons and humanitarian-assistance as "aid". 14 billion dollars in "aid" and it's 90% weapons and 10% food to feed the same people the weapons are attempting to kill. It's just one of the many smokescreens that make this all so much harder to talk about!!!)
In New York, you can vote uncommitted by leaving your ballot blank.
I was already planning on doing this, but last week I got a call from a NY number (one benefit of keeping my VT number is it's easy to spot "real" calls from like my dentist) and it was a lovely woman asking if she could tell me all about the uncommitted call to action – and she was thrilled I had already heard about it and then told me I was doing great so I assured her that actually volunteering her time was even better and we were both laughing and smiling because it felt good to stumble into a conversation and leave feeling more hopeful.
It's so important to feel hopeful.
And it was really important to get that call.
Even more important to VOTE IN THE PRIMARY. Specifically, to vote uncommitted!!! If your state hasn't already had their primary (don't get me started on staggered primaries!!!) please look up if you can vote uncommitted by leaving the ballot blank, or doing a specific write-in campaign. I don't want either of these men as president but I only get a say in ONE of the parties so I'm going to do my best, along with millions of other New Yorker's, to motivate the DNC to get off their ass and give us a candidate who is not complicit in some of the most horrific war crimes ever recorded.
It's good to remember to have hope. It's good to highlight that people like Senator Chuck Schumer HAVE moved on this issue and while his call for temporary ceasefires don't go nearly as far as I wish they did, it's SO IMPORTANT that he moved. He changed his mind because of the calls from constituents. Because of the flood of emails. Because of the people following him around at work begging him to take their anguish seriously and use his immense influence and literal power as the LEADER OF THE SENATE for good.
And he did.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was publicly pleaded with while at a movie theatre, and within two weeks was making impassioned speeches from the House floor.
So while I don't have any naivete left about how much people power vs. corporate power "gets you" in these here United States, it means A LOT to me that it will still get us something.
Unity with each other surpasses any hollow legislation anyway.
True solidarity is imperfectly captured by laws, so it matters to get clear and stay vigilant.
Look for the hope. Focus on the movement. Do what you can to stay in the fight. Every action matters – even if it doesn't feel that way right now.
Everything I know about the impacts of war I learned from art. Facts don't resonate the same way.
I was listening to a podcast about the movie Die Hard, and the guest was Kevin Smith. He was mentioning his friendship with Alan Rickman and said they had once met up "while Alan was in New York directing the play about Rachel Corrie's life." He didn't linger on the play, or talk about anything Rickman might have said about it. It was named as the reason for him being in New York more than anything.
Yet, Alan Rickman producing that play remains relevant and I just was really struck by the impact of that. Rachel Corrie's passion for human rights, which led to her ultimate sacrifice, and her martyrdom was remembered & eternalized in this work of art.
By mounting the play in the West End and on Broadway, Alan Rickman kept her story alive and because of his actions, those audiences do as well.
It was a quick mention, but it felt huge to me. It felt good to remember that there have been people fighting this fight, unflinchingly, for decades. Multi-prong approaches and all. When people speak, others do hear it. Even if not right away. I can't imagine how many people listened to that podcast and went to look up the production, who learned the story after hearing it mentioned.
Art is how we keep stories alive, it's how we tell the truth, it's how we can bear to carry these stories without collapsing under the weight of grief they carry.
Art is political. Good art is, anyway. I have no interest in consuming milquetoast "content" that strives to be palatable to the highest number of people by becoming so full of unoffensive platitudes that it fails to say anything for fear of saying something wrong.
Voting is political. It's like, the essence of it. I've been so used to living in democracy that I forgot it wasn't guaranteed. That there are people who live their entire lives intent to destroy it.
The counterfactual to keep in mind though, are that for every person who seeks to destroy, there is someone who seeks to cultivate. People dedicate their entire lives to keeping democracy alive, to spreading it, to collectively empowering personal autonomy and reminding people what makes life worth living by capturing the spirit of togetherness and the wisdom of the collective.
I haven't been writing lately.
But it feels really good to be doing again.