A LETTER TO THE LEFT

This is a pivotal election. We are going to the polls to choose a president amidst global outcry over genocide in Palestine. Wide layers of activists and radicals, Arabs and Muslims, and many more are utterly disgusted by this horrifying status quo. 

I get it. Its hard to stomach voting for someone whose politics you largely oppose. But this is much more than a moment when we must swallow our pride and qualify our principles to vote for the lesser evil. This election threatens to thoroughly upend our nation’s democratic process. If Trump wins, the possibility of meaningful elections in 2026 or 2030 dims massively.

Jill Stein is the Green Party’s dogged candidate. She argues that a vote for either Trump or Harris is a vote for genocide. I disagree. A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote that preserves some political terrain through which antiwar and anti-imperialist forces can influence global policy. We can vote for Harris while thoroughly condemning US complicity in Israel’s genocidal war and its threat of a wider war in a volatile geopolitical region.

Many of us live in states where the left’s votes have no hope of swaying this election. But many of us have friends and family in critical swing states. We need to offer them validation for making a hard choice and casting a ballot against a fascist revival in our nation. Our radical principles are not uprooted by a decision to cast a strategic and tactical vote against a terrifying future.

It is hard to imagine the range of horrors that would follow Trump’s election to a second term. Part of Trump’s battle cry is that we are a “nation under foreign occupation.” He advocates a mass deportation whose scale would be unprecedented historically. We are guaranteed a broad eradication of the political independence of the civil service. We are assured of further restrictions on abortion and reproductive freedom. 

There is no doubt about the severity of threat Trump represents. His recent rally in Madison Square put the worst of his agenda on display. 

This is a future that our people, our movements, and our planet cannot afford. Please join me in casting the only meaningful vote against this horrifying prospect. Join me in voting to elect Kamala Harris as President of the United States.

Painting by David Amoroso: @AmorosoART on IG and twitter

–BYPO PHOENIX c)2024