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.”
It is possible, but it doesn’t happen particularly often. The kind of thinking on display in this thread is defense of a barrier to doing these kinds of actions, from recognizing one’s own lack of political education, from developing a concrete notion of leverage or collective action.
When people do hold themselves to those standards but still hold out hope for Dems, they learn some uncomfortable lessons. The first one is that Democrats make you their opponent and gladly lie about you and will even throw their money and influence behind Republicans instead. Something else that people learn (at least when they are honest with themselves) is that they often don’t really have a concrete idea of how to make demands or build leverage, and so they will engage in actions and spin their wheels. The ones that are not honest with themselves will still claim a victory. The ones that are honest with themselves will engage in productive criticism and development of their political program.
But this is so many steps past what the people here are doing, relying on tired canards shared as memes. I would rather they at least get to the “try and fail” step of becoming politically educated and a force for humanity, but we are stuck at the “defend everything Dems tell us to do” phase.
As someone who is politically active in ways other than voting, I’m calling bullshit. You’re just making assumptions about how other people act, you have no evidence.
