Update: This essay has now been turned into an amazing viral video. 😍 Check out #VoteLikeARadical here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DB4RO8vvJY5/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Every election season since 2016 I've shared this essay with friends. Let's build a radical understanding of voting so we can move on to much bigger things! - April Rosenblum
Every four years, people I respect a lot tell me they won’t be voting. They refuse to participate in a system this unjust, or they can’t bear to be associated with the one candidate on the ballot who has a real chance. The kinds of people who tell me this tend to have strong ethics and deep principles. And I get it: Why would any of us want to give our seal of approval to a leader who has ignored and financed the utter destruction of the Palestinian people? Or backed the Iraq war? Or done any of the countless unethical things that U.S. leaders do? How could we possibly do that?
But I’m a radical, and I see voting in a different way. I believe the difference between us is that my friends – as radical as many of them are – have fallen into the habit of seeing voting in a fundamentally liberal way.
For the liberals who are reading this, I don’t mean to offend you. When I say that my radical friends are voting like liberals, I’m not using that term as an insult. What I mean by liberal, in this context, is the idea that at a basic level, the system we have is okay; it just needs some improvements.
Most people I spend time around – me, my readers, and my radical friends – share an understanding that this system is not okay. Reforms here and there won’t fix it. It was built to deliver power and privilege to a very few, prop them up and keep them in charge. But even radicals are shaped by the common sense of the world we grow up in. We all mix knee-jerk habits from the dominant culture in with the conscious radical choices we make. It’s harmless in lots of circumstances, but when it comes to voting, we need to be radicals.
What is a radical, and what is a vote?
Growing up in America, most of us learned a common story in school about our political system. We were told our system was the best one. That a vote meant something special. Expressed who we were. Told the world what we stood for. We were told that in a democracy, the people rule.
Some of us could see the cracks in that story from an early age; we saw how injustice hit our families and our neighborhoods. For others, it took longer to absorb. But I think as kids, most of us wanted it to be true. We wanted to think the system could work, and that, somewhere, there was somebody who could take charge and make things right.
As we grow, it gets harder and harder to believe that this is a democracy. Rule by the few – oligarchy – fits better. People with money obviously make the rules in this country, but don't have to follow any themselves. Those of us with less have very little power over the political system, or over our lives – as we’re reminded when we’re, say, being overworked by bosses, denied healthcare by insurers, or profiled by police.
Instead of power, this society gives us a consolation prize: We get chances to express ourselves. We express ourselves through our clothes; through the things we buy; through clever social media posts that dull the pain of bad days. And then, every four years, we get one more chance to express ourselves: the choice between two possible presidents.
Of course, if the system worked, and all that was wrong was a few places where it’s rough around the edges, we could have our say, vote in the right person, and they could fix it. But what happens when you realize this system’s problems go deeper than any vote can fix?
The day you come to understand that our system doesn’t work because it can’t work, that is the day that your life begins to be a radical life.
The word radical comes from the Latin for “root.” Radicals notice root problems. It’s not about being loud or extreme. It’s about looking at this world with clear eyes. No matter how calm and composed you are, you became a radical the moment you saw the system was unequal at its core; when you first suspected that to fix this would require going to the foundation and changing things from the bottom up. (Are you liberal readers realizing you’re actually radicals? Cool – I thought some of you might. :)
Radicals don’t settle for superficial opportunities to express ourselves. We’re after real power to change all of our lives. But every four years, I think a lot of us radicals revert to acting as if that old story is true. We get so irked by pressures to vote that we start to fall into the same trap as our friends and coworkers. By deciding not to vote, or by voting for a candidate that can’t win but can make a point, we stake out our own little patch of independence – not realizing we’re buying into the same illusion that traps most Americans. Like all those other people, we’re giving outsized importance to the vote, as if it’s our precious last bastion of individual freedom, instead of a tool with one specific use.
Radicals have a very different use for voting. Let’s shake ourselves free from the election year fog and remember what it is.
1. All candidates, once elected, become our opponents
All candidates, once they make it past a presidential election, become our opponents. It’s nothing personal; they could be the nicest candidate ever. It’s just that a president’s job description is to keep an inherently warped system stable. And our job, as radicals, is to undo the unfair system itself.
No president – not the most socialist, not the greenest, not the most independent of independents – can challenge the system at its core while also propping up its success. No matter how good a person they might be, the president of an oligarchy doesn't have the power to fundamentally improve things. They don’t stroll into office and do as they please. They have to fend off a political establishment and answer to the 1%.
In the unlikely event that someone good gets into office – someone we actually would like to see succeed – it’s still not our job to support them. It’s our job to build so much popular resistance that they are forced to defy their bosses. Whether we’re fighting a president we despise, or a president we’d like to like, our role is still to fight.
That’s why there’s only one factor that matters in who gets our vote. It’s not which candidate we wish would be powerful. It’s which election day result will leave ourselves most powerful. Which election day result will take away the fewest of our rights.
What has always been true in earlier periods of US history is even more stark today. Republican Party values today are not just hateful. They are the trademarks of fascist regimes. Regimes where public silence becomes necessary for survival. Where social movements can no longer survive above ground.
As radicals, we should have no illusions that either one of these candidates deserves our vote. But you don’t vote for who’s deserving. You vote for the ones you’re best suited to fight.
Your vote is not a code for “Please represent me” or “I support you.” Your vote is the physical act of selecting your opponent and the contract you sign to resist.
2. We vote for the ones we’re best suited to fight
From a radical point of view, the value of an election is that it’s one of the few times we in social justice movements get to choose our opponent. That’s a rich opportunity.
We often hear liberals say that they’ll give in and “hold their noses” to vote. But radicals shouldn’t vote as an act of submission. When we pull the lever, we are saying: Pleased to meet you, candidate X. I'm looking forward to doing battle with you.
So which candidate gives us better odds in that political battle?
Since 2016, US elections have been between neoliberal Democrats and overt authoritarians. The Democrats on the ballot are predictable politicians; people who weigh consequences and keep up appearances. This is a good thing. These politicians fear bad PR, which means that as we deepen our strategy and grow our movements, we can pressure them and win our demands.
The Republican candidates of this era are not bound by such norms. They are preparing to implement fascism. Fascists in power don't need to worry about public opinion; they just silence or kill the opposition (that's us). Donald Trump’s first term, of course, was just a teaser. It showed us hints of how much farther he and his supporters intend to go.
A radical vote is always about choosing our opponent. In these years, it just happens to be very clear which opponents our movements can survive.
3. We protect our real source of power
When we get too wrapped up in a vote – whether by using it or by refusing it – we’re mistaking our vote for our power. Voting is just a tool, although it’s an essential tool in some years to protect our movements.
Because it’s in our movements that our real power lies. It’s in movements for change that our personal opinion carries far more weight than a vote (or a non-vote). Every individual can alter a movement’s course; even critical feedback from the outside can help alternatives be born.
At their best, people’s movements are incubators for new ideas about how we make a fair world. They don’t just change laws, public consciousness, and global culture; they are decision-making laboratories where we get real-life practice in democracy. But our movements can only survive when we protect them, and few movements can survive fascism.
So, yes: Not voting, or making a protest vote for a third party, is an option. It’s the kind of option that puts our dissatisfaction on record, like faded letters carved on a park bench that read, “I was here.” A radical life gives us more obligation, but also more hope. As radicals, we don’t care about leaving that kind of passive, powerless mark. We care about what comes next. The world will know - you were here - because of the role you took in rebuilding it.
It is heartbreaking and frightening and exhilarating and empowering to realize: There is no one responsible in charge of this system. There is no candidate who could make such an unequal system work – only worse opponents and better opponents for us to go up against, as we begin to take it apart. It’s we who have the vision; we who hold the task of remaking this world.
Being a radical means planning for what lies ahead. Cultivating the kind of ground that will keep our movements alive and let our visions grow.
Not everyone wants to be a radical. But everyone can vote like one. All it takes is not mistaking your vote for your power. A vote is not our power; it’s our chance to choose an opponent. And sometimes, it’s the tool we need to keep a fascist out of office, so our movements can thrive.
The Christian fascist Right has a deep hold on power in this country and it intends to go much farther. If we’re lucky, we have years of work ahead of us to push them back. Let’s use the one thing voting is good for, so that we can buy ourselves the time we need for that fight. Let’s vote like radicals, who know exactly what a vote is and don’t get fooled into mistaking it for our power or our values. I want us to survive to use our real power, so the day comes when we can direct our movement-building energy not toward running from fascism, but toward navigating climate crisis, nourishing life in lands that colonialism has tried to destroy, and building the roots of a real democracy, starting from the ground up.
PS - Aurora Levins Morales and I have noted with pleasure the synchronicity between her essay, “Midnight in the Latrines – Again" and mine. If you like this essay, you'll also love hers. Become her patron to read it here or see it at Convergence Mag.