What About the Protest Vote?

I refuse to participate in a fixed game out of fear. Why should I legitimize this corrupt system with my participation when life will continue to be hard and probably get worse no matter who wins? My ancestors fought so I could have the right to this opinion and to choose whether to vote or not. Don’t use their legacy to shame my choices.

We have been throwing votes and hopes into a system that has been beating, raping, and exploiting people and the environment for centuries. When will you have enough of choosing between the better of two evils ? What is it going to take for you to jump off this burning sinking ship? Don’t you believe in our ability to create something more humane together?

This culture is literally killing our sisters, brothers, and ripping apart families daily. In the era of the so called first black president our suffering can be googled and watched online for entertainment while the perpetrators continue to go free with no consequence from this so called criminal justice system. Yet you want to fix your mouth to tell me if I don’t vote its all my fault and I have no right to say anything? How dare you insult my intelligence by going into empty naive speeches about how someone died so I could therefore I must. Trust, I am not ranting based on  what they teach us about the so called civil rights movement I understand political science and resistance.

My ancestors died protesting the same system that continues to find new ways to enslave and kill us today. Voting was the strategy then and now after decades of exercising the vote how has that strategy served us? Us, as in the masses of people not just a handful of politicians,reformists, and business people who have found a comfort zone profiting from our pain under the guise of “American Democracy” or the so called “Free Market”.

What is the role of the vote in the struggle for liberation in America? Are the participatory democracy strategies worth all the time and energy we have been giving them? Did our ancestors really die so we could choose between Trump or Clinton? If voting isn’t such a high priority then what next? These are the intergenerational discussions we should be having? Not patronizing respectability diatribes about whats wrong with young people today or why one must vote. How much more political theatre must you see? Bush stealing an election and lying to take us to war wasn’t enough? Maybe the betrayal and disappoint from little return on Obama’s hope dope campaign and his subsequent continue of the status quo time in office might move you. If having a black president can’t stop the police from murdering people with little to no consequence daily what’s the point?

Feels more and more like fascism and less like democracy each day. What will it take for us to get real and move away from the participatory democracy strategies and the shaming of people who use their feet to protest and build; instead of voting just because someone died or because they are a little more afraid of one candidate over the other? We are the vanguard, the world is watching. Participating out of fear or ignorance isn’t freedom.

#JustVotingIsntEnough #DirtyArtBoi #CorruptElectionsWontFreeUs #WakeUp