More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.
“We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter, published Thursday night, reads.
“Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply can’t vote for a member of the administration that sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones,” the letter continued. “As we consider the full situation carefully, however, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all of our communities.”
Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon.
Watch the “a vote for Kamala is a vote for genocide” crowd claim these Palestinian and Lebanese Americans support genocide in Palestine and Lebanon.
Welcome to your first exposure to the NGO and political class constellation. You might notice that the letter itself is not just Palestinians, either, but includes, per their own statement, Arabs, “Progressive Democrats”, and “Community Leqders”. Notice how many are top-level leadership of various Dem-connected NGOs and how few seem to be average folks.
Dems have done the same thing when it comes to supporting cops against demands for racial justice re: policing. They gather a set of black " community leaders", I.e. business owners and heads of NGOs and party-associated orgs, and then say, “but actually we want more cops!” It is tokenizing.
But you have correctly identified its purpose: to get you to participate in the tokenization and have a green light for complicity in genocide. After all, Real Palestinians ™ gave you permission, right?
Called it.
“I care more about Palestine than those worthless Palestinians do.”
Please do your best to not tokeize marginalized communities. I have mobilized more Palestinians for actions than there are Palestinians on this list. They do not speak for Palestinians. These are party insiders and the heads of NGOs. And, oer the letter itself, which you obviously did not read, it is signed not just by Palestinians, but by “Arabs, Progressive Democrats, and Community Leaders”.
Democrats do this tokenizing bullshit all the time. Their favorite target is black people where they use the same subclass of people and claim thev speak for " the black community" itself a racist statement, as black people are not a monolith, just like Palestinians are not a monolith.
Imagine if you saw a headline and letter that read, “Latinos sign letter urging lower wages for Latinos” and it was just signed by a bunch of CEOs. Would you go around telling people that if they want higher wages for Latinos, they know better than Latinos? Would you pretend this is a representative group? Would you go around demanding lower pay?
It’s not false that Trump would be even worse though, having encouraged Netanyahu to be even more brutal than he is. So if you have the choice between a vote to keep Trump out, or not voting and making it easier for him to take over, the less worse (but still bad) option for Palestine is to vote for whoever will most effectively keep Trump out.
I know this kind of electoral pragmatism feels a bit disgusting, but the cure for that is to get politically active outside of the electoral system, in addition to keeping the worst candidate out at election time.
It’s not false that Trump would be even worse though, having encouraged Netanyahu to be even more brutal than he is.
Netanyahu already has unconditional material support for the genocide from the Biden-Harris administration and they help run interference quite competently both internationally and domestically. They would still have you believe they are working for a “ceasefire” while celebrating the assassination of negotiators and sending unlimited JDAMs to bomb children in refugee camps.
There is no worse. They are far more competent at this.
Though again, you should be against genocide and not support genociders. It is not strategic to nirnalize genocide. It is not smart tactics to be a guaranteed lever pull even up to genocide.
I know this kind of electoral pragmatism feels a bit disgusting, but the cure for that is to get politically active outside of the electoral system, in addition to keeping the worst candidate out at election time.
It is not pragmatic at all. It is just the lesser evil argument that Dems always use to sheepdog people with a conscience into helping them out. It is a one-way street, as they never actually have to do anything at all that you demand, they are, correctly, treating you as a guaranteed cote. They will just send their PR teams at you.
We are in this position right now because of this “pragmatism” that prevents any notion of accountability or principal or the idea that you should be able to make a demand and have it reflected in policy. The genocide in Gaza is very unpopular at least in polls. The reason the political class does not follow this popular will is that you are not perceived as any kind of threat. You gladly give away all leverage and announce you will always do so, even up to voting for genocide!
And this is just disempowerment at the level of an individual. We are of course much more powerful when we organize together and build towards leverage. But that must be done through organizations and cannot happen through me, an individual, telling you that you have a moral responsibility to work against and never for genociders.
I love you but let’s let the bad faith people speak for themselves.
Those shitty trolls pretending to be tankies don’t need your help.
Welcome to the Dick chopping block shop. We can take off half an inch or the whole thing
Edit
I hope you people downloading me realize that not pulling the lever in the trolley problem is a choice just as much as pulling the lever
Just don’t bring up CCP genocide, they are totally cool with that genocide.
