Wednesday morning, America will wake up, thank God that we
don’t have to hear another political commercial for another
couple of years, and begin to come to grips with the fact that our
new president is in the richest 1 percent of Americans, comes from
a family of powerful Washington insiders, and is completely
beholden to corporate interests.
The most frustrating thing about elections, for many of us who
spend much of our lives fighting for social justice, is just how
all-important so many people seem to think they are.
The truth is that what happens in the next four years, eight
years and beyond, will not be primarily determined by what you do
in the voting booth on Tuesday. It will be determined by what you,
your co-workers, your fellow students, women, gays and lesbians,
Latinos and African-Americans do in your community and neighborhood
organizations, in your unions, in your churches, in your schools
and in the streets.
Was a 40-hour work week “given” to workers by
benevolent, kind-hearted politicians “fighting for working
families” (and who does either corporate candidate think they
are kidding)? Of course not; it was the result of strikes,
work-actions and massive grassroots political mobilization.
The same can be said for essentially every social gain average
Americans have won, from women’s suffrage, to the right to
choose, to civil rights legislation. And this holds true today.
Did Justice for Janitors win a new, better contract because Dick
Riordan wanted them to? No, they led a militant, organized strike
and won a contract for themselves. After thousands took to the
streets in Seattle, die-hard corporate free trade proponent Bill
Clinton was forced to issue a statement insisting that he
“agreed with many of the protesters’ concerns.”
Big of him, don’t you think?
Voting is important, and everyone should make sure to take the
time to do so today. But just don’t kid yourself into
thinking that once you come out of the voting booth the work is
done.
When talking to people who support the two major candidates
today, it is hard to find someone who is very enthusiastic. In fact
Ralph Nader’s assertion that both major party candidates are
essentially “corporations disguised as people” running
for president is tough to disagree with. Although people will
quibble back and forth about whose candidate is the lesser of two
evils and insist on the importance of “strategic
voting”, nearly everyone seems to agree that democracy has
been bought and sold to the highest bidder.
One of the things, frankly, that I am most tired of is having
people whose sole political act occurs within the confines of a
voting booth suggest to me that by making the choice to vote for a
third-party candidate, I am being somehow “irrational”
or that I am just not concerned about “the issues.”
I, and many, many others who will refuse to vote for either of
the corporate candidates, care very much about the issues and that
is why we spend countless hours every year working in a variety of
ways to build strong, independent, grassroots movements for social
justice, corporate accountability, workers’ rights, strong
environmental standards and many other important issues.
We believe very strongly in these issues and we are casting our
votes accordingly. But we know that if we leave politics to the
politicians, the issues ““ and the people ““ are bound to
lose.