Don't Just Vote: Embrace Your Rage & Fight Back (#GonzoNotes)

Embrace your rage and fight back

Don’t just vote, get angry and fuck shit up.

The midterm election is quickly approaching and it promises to be a pivotal one. Understandably, many liberals are pouring their efforts into voter registration and voter drives with a fervor that hasn’t been seen in years. They’re hoping to channel all the popular anger at the state of things here in this hell nation back into the voting booth.

I want to tell you: don’t let them.

Look, I’m not telling you not to vote. What I’m saying is that voting, however vital, is like sticking your finger in the dike while a tsunami pours over your village.

The national anger was palpable as our rapist nazi president pushed through his rapey pal to one of the most powerful seats in government. After a token resistance, Democrats urged everyone to be polite to each other then helped the Republicans push through numerous other fascist judges, so everyone could go home in time to campaign for your vote.

We’re still struggling to understand what this means for the future of human rights, society, and planet, as more bad news pours in. Our planet has around a decade left before the real climate horrors begin, as if the constant, deadly storms and weather disasters we’re seeing now aren’t enough. We’ve even less time to begin transforming our way of life.

Don’t just vote, voting isn’t enough

We can’t vote our way out of decades of Kavanaugh on SCOTUS, not to mention the other lifetime appointees in the legal system. We can’t vote our way out of climate disaster when neither party has the spine to take on the battle in the way necessary to save our planet.

That’s not even getting into the massive wave of racist voter suppression underway from the nazis in power. It’s simply not possible from within the confines of this system to take the steps necessary to save ourselves without immense pressure from the people.

Every time the regime unleashes some new offense against us, and we don’t fight back, we’re telling them to go even further next time. At some point, we need to move beyond the voting booth. Don’t just vote: interrupt their dinners, get in their faces, block roads, make noise and just generally shut this whole place down. It’s going to take real resistance, acts small and large, loud and unseen, but continuous ones, to turn this around.

Choosing rage or despair?

I think our rage is actually healthier. Rage unexpressed will make you sick, yet so many voices tell us to wait until November every year, as if there’s a single annual occasion for expressing your rage, and a single way of doing it. Checking a box on a ballot is the only way?

Hardly.

Don’t just vote. Stop listening when voices on both sides tell you to settle down. Even if you vote for them, especially if you vote for them, put pressure on them too. Be a thorn in the side of every powerful person you can, until they’re forced to listen to us. They’re going to chide us and humiliate us if they can, for getting in the way. Then they’ll attack us. They’ll kill or imprison more of us.

If we get angry together, maybe we can fix this.

It seems to me, anyway, if the choices are rage or despair, then I choose rage.

A quote

It’s up to us to decide what kind of an end of the world it’s going to be—one where we get through together, looking out for each other, or one where the competition and greed nurtured by capitalism begets even fiercer competition between us. — Riot Dogg, “The Hotwire #40” from Crimethinc.

Gonzo action tips

In July, I interviewed Mapache, a young activist with OccupyICE in San Antonio. A DACA recipient, the government targeted Mapache for retaliation for his involvement in activism and for his political views. Facing a seemingly impossible legal challenge to maintain his U.S. residency, he was recently forced to leave the U.S. in order to escape a horrible concentration camp for immigrant prisoners. He now resides in Mexico, where he’s never lived.

You can check out this poem from Mapache or listen to his moving interview with It’s Going Down. Please follow @mapachelibre1 on Twitter and reach out to him with messages of support. I know he really appreciates them!

More importantly look for ways to carry on his work and that of the OccupyICE movement by putting yourself in the way of ICE and our genocidal deportation system.