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Does Occupy Vote? (On Firedoglake)

Posted in Austin, Firedoglake, Occupy Wall Street, and Published

Elephant and Donkey candidate puppets
Political Puppets from Occupy the Stage, New Orleans

On Firedoglake, I wrote about the Occupy movement’s ethical dilemma over voting and the profound effect it had on the election:

Occupy and many allied activist groups stand in opposition to the idea that electoral politics should be the focus of American political engagement. It is especially opposed to the idea that just voting out one plutocrat and replacing him with a new one will fix our problems — even if that new plutocrat is a woman, from a racial minority, or practices an alternative religion or sexuality. Its ranks are full of activists who supported Obama with hours of hard work in the run-up to the 2008 election, only to “wake the eff up” over the succeeding years and realize real change doesn’t come from far-away leaders.

It’s my experience that occupiers are far more engaged with mainstream politics than mainstream America, which for the most part unthinkingly abstains from participating at all. While the average American simply does not vote, the question of whether to vote and how was an important concern to OWS. Members of Occupy Chicago spent hours in a heated debate over whether it was ethical to burn voter registration cards as a form of protest.

Read more on Firedoglake.

I also recently shared my thoughts on the 2012 election:

An interesting development was the election of the country’s first openly pansexual elected official: Mary Gonzalez elected to the Texas legislature from El Paso. I’m exhausted from celebrating last night in one of downtown Austin’s pocket gayborhoods (the queer clubs are in clusters instead of one strip). It’d be an understatement to say the mood was jubilant as Obama referenced LGBTQ people during his acceptance speech. It was lovely to get swept away in a little bit of that enthusiasm, even if my cynical side kept me muttering snarky comments to my friends.

Read more on Firedoglake.

Photo by Occupy the Stage, used with permission.

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