Not that the line starting to go down would represent positive progress on climate change. It would mean only less new damage with every passing year, a smaller progress in worsening the catastrophe that’s already well in motion. But the fact that the line isn’t even going down illustrates the catastrophic absurdity of claiming that we’re making tangible progress with existing policies.
The home we all live is on fire, and we’re still lighting new blazes, while congratulating ourselves that we’re meeting our targets.
I want to be able to support the causes I believe in and actually be a part of the change I want to see but I was never taught how to find, join and work with these groups....
I had this exact same question and it led to me starting !inperson / !inperson as an attempt at a solution. It’s already pointed me to a few good ones.
There are also some pretty fantastic ideas in this thread, which I plan to post as new threads there.
We often don’t take the right not to vote seriously enough. For centuries, black people in America had to give their votes to white people who didn’t fully represent them and hadn’t earned their votes properly, until the Right Not to Vote Act of 1965 came along. At last, they had the power to refuse to vote for anyone...
You insult the intelligence of anyone who listens to them. You’re … a cruel, paranoid person.
Yeah, I feel you on this. I read back what I wrote and I think it’s too mean-spirited and bitter to have much positive come out of it. I was in a very foul mood when I wrote it.
I feel pretty strongly about this, because I care. As I imagine you do, and as a lot of people engaging with me on it do regardless of it it’s friendly or unfriendly. It’s an important issue. It’s the world we’re all going to live in. I’ve been spending time reading directly the words of people in the past going through times of real struggle and trying to work for change, and trying to figure out what I can do. We’re clearly at a historical crossroads where the world needs quite a lot of help, and I’m very much as outsider as far as organizing or activism or anything like that, and then after that I came back to Lemmy and read a bunch of messages saying to me “selfish piece of shit” “Get fucked.” “disengenuous bullshit” and so on, because I posted a meme saying there’s a big difference between Biden and Trump.
I’ve been trying to react to things like that by creating subs and conversation centered around the idea of organizing positive change, getting beyond the idea of yelling at each other on the internet. I’ve done a certain amount, not too much. I’m very open to anyone who wants to point me in the right direction to places I can go in person, things I can do, because I’m having trouble with it. XR doesn’t have a group near me. I joined CCL. What else? There was a Gaza protest near me that I didn’t go to because I didn’t know, and I for real don’t even know where to start as far as finding out about the next one. If voting is bullshit in your opinion or in someone else’s opinion, what should I be doing instead (for me it’ll be in addition to), to create this better system?
Also, side note, if you think my sarcastic post was “cruel,” I’m curious to know what word you apply to what Trump wants to do to vulnerable minorities and activist organizations, if he wins.
The results are that dire that you’re willing to infer people vocal about not voting are foreign plants, insincere, and arguing in bad faith.
Is the idea of a social media campaign to promote a particular party’s interests so outlandish and un-heard-of that it’s impossible that it’s happening? Probably it’s counterproductive to just throw out accusations at everybody, because it’s going to create hostility with people who are genuine people and not plants and are just going to get offended. That’s fair, you’re right, and I can more or less agree with you that the way I constructed this message is just more strife. But I think if the ones of them that are genuine people haven’t had it said bluntly to them in some form that the “don’t vote” strategy they’re offering is stupid and counterproductive, they need to hear it. Yes, even if it’s their well-developed political opinion. Well-developed political opinions are sometimes wrong. I don’t know how to add anything to my civil rights analogy from the post. I think if something from that doesn’t resonate with you as a good-faith and sensible message, I’m not sure what to say.
I just recently learned that this all may not be the consensus view on this instance. If it’s not welcome, I can take it somewhere else, I won’t try to impose it if it’s officially not wanted.
you’ve weighed all of the options and decided the most effective use of your time and emotional bandwidth, the path to getting the most votes to defeat the most fascist candidate by electing the less-so, is to pick fights on the internet
I think pointing out insidious, counterproductive thinking is a good use of my time. I think prioritizing real world activism is probably better, yes. Part of the reason I think the people I’ve been sometimes arguing with are speaking in bad faith is that many times I’ve asked them, okay if voting is bullshit, what should I do instead? What activist group, what organization can I join that’ll be actually effective? I did have someone send me something to read, and I plan to read it after making a small start on it. That’s the only person who actually answered with anything other than further hostility or silence.
you aren’t really interested in what your country does outside of it’s territory
Congressional and presidential elections are totally unimportant and if I only cared about the world outside my borders, I would see that? A lot of dead Ukrainians, or ones currently trying to fight a war without ammunition, would disagree with you.
As far as Gaza:
On Monday, Trump called for a new — and more expansive — ban on immigrants from certain countries, and for the first time, he included Gaza.
As a candidate in 2015, Trump proposed a total “shutdown” on Muslims entering the U.S. As president, he tried to enact a sweeping executive order, which was eventually limited to five Muslim-majority countries, along with North Korea and Venezuela.
Biden then rescinded that ban when he took office.
On Monday, Trump also said he would “proactively” send immigration agents to “pro-jihadist demonstrations” in the U.S. to remove noncitizens and implement “strong ideological screening of all immigrants,” which would include a person’s rejection of Hamas.
Wanting to be able to attend a pro-Palestinian demonstration without people from immigration agencies showing up at the protests at the president’s direction is precisely one good example of why I think Trump versus Biden makes a difference. Immigration agents were, it eventually turned out, the not-identified-with-any-insignia law enforcement who at one point were grabbing people from protests and hauling them away to unidentified places until they felt like letting them go some time later, during the Trump administration.
you don’t really care about minorities
I had a friend who could have been one of those little kids in cages on the southern border, if things had worked out a little different. Trump started the family separation policy and actively defended it, and Biden started the program to try to find those little kids’ families and reunite them. I think because I’ve had friends who were undocumented immigrants, that kind of thing hits me a lot closer to home than it does a lot of people who opine about it on the internet, and makes the “Biden and Trump are the same” bad-faith argument a lot more of a personal thing for me. Yes, I do care about minorities. Trump’s overt cruelty to minorities which causes real damage, sometimes catastrophic little-kids-drowning-in-the-Rio-Grande damage, to real people in the real world is a big part of why it offends me so much when people say they’re the same.
get organized with your neighbors
Where can I start? How did you start or find a group to join up with? I want to do this, yes. I’ve been looking for things I can do. That was the original impetus that has now led me to “and voting is important, too.”
Can I have your phone number to give to the loved ones of anyone who dies in a Trump-promoted genocide, or gets imprisoned within the US for the crime of being trans, or whatever he does? You can talk to that person about how you’re tending to yourself and your chosen community.
Whoa, can I do that too? I’m just going to just start saying out of nowhere that the other person proved that I’m right, whenever I’m promoting a dogshit line of reasoning and someone asks questions I don’t want to answer.
I know! He came into office with strong sanctions being applied to Israel for their massacre policies, a decades-long established ban on the construction of new settlements, and an agreement which was undoing illegally constructed settlements and resettling Palestinian families back into their homes. Biden broke with all of that, gave Netanyahu a green light to start their apartheid policies again, and personally visited the West Bank and shot a few Gazans himself with a sniper rifle, just to emphasize the point.
In contrast, Trump is famous for protecting the rights of Arabs. Just like he is Hispanics and Chinese people. Why, the strong protections that all Palestinians enjoyed were partly his doing. They were part of the Iran / Muslim immigrant / asylum seeker reforms he enacted. Although, the main work was started by other Western politicians. I can’t wait for Trump to get elected, and undo all the harm Biden’s been doing, and finally set us on the road to lasting peace in the Middle East, and a world where the rights of vulnerable non-white people will finally be strongly protected in the halls of power.
I agree with a lot of this, yes. DC is a very weird place and most of our politicians are old as hell. I think a lot of them remember the lessons of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter a lot more clearly than they remember the lessons of Bernie Sanders. Plus, a lot of them are corrupted by the lure of corporate cash, and they turned their backs on the American people. It’s a hell of a shame. I agree.
Letting Trump get elected and pour gasoline all over the whole edifice and throw anyone who’s left of Ronald Reagan in a detention center won’t help any of that. That example of how much damage Trump was able to do to abortion rights and immigration because people couldn’t stand to vote for Hilary Clinton, just because she was objectively awful, is pretty illustrative of the calculus that should go into this election.
This logic of “the building we all live in needs major repairs and has for years, so there’s no need to put out the fire in the attic until we can address that” winds me up, yes. That’s absolutely true.
I appreciate it. You are welcome to reuse it, if you like it. I’m just pissed off at the absolute self-defeating absurdity of these arguments and how self-righteously these people are screeching them. Welcome to the internet, I guess.
I feel like I just asked you this: Are you under the impression that I somehow have the ability to choose who wins the primaries?
I have one vote and you have one vote. My ability to affect the primaries is equal to yours. There are systems of media that conspire to make it tough for a person other than pro-corporate trash to win the primaries, but why are you talking to me like that’s my fault? And why are you saying that if the wrong person wins, then staying home to put in office an even worse person is going to help solve the problem?
What if Bernie Sanders might get elected in the primary, but I decide there’s an element of his platform that I don’t like, and I stay home in protest instead of voting, and Biden wins the primary instead? Am I, then, a selfish piece of shit?
Yes, Trump will absolutely threaten trans people’s safety in addition to being far more encouraging than Biden is with massacring Arabs. That’s not “using as a shield,” that’s just what’s up. Of course you already know this.
I expected Biden to be pretty bad, just because he’s a rich white guy who’s been in politics all his life and the Democrats are usually pretty bad. I voted for him originally mainly just because he wouldn’t try to kill all the Mexicans or re-invade Vietnam or put trans people in prison or whatever like Trump would, basically your point of view in this message.
He surprised me. I couldn’t see Hilary Clinton forgiving student loan debt or pausing LNG exports or making these pitifully small sanctions on a pitifully small number of Israelis which is still better than most US presidents’ “here’s some more patriot missiles and rockets God bless your killing” approach to Israel. He’s still pretty far from what I would like to have, but I expected pure bullshit and he’s better than average. You’re not required to agree, but that’s how I see it.
Stop the Genocide - Surround the White House, June 8th - Transportation from 33 Major Metro Areas (www.answercoalition.org)
Let’s build a new world in the shell of the old - Wildcat Anarchist Fair, Sydney AUS June 9th (www.wildcatfair.org)
TIME'S Up! - NYC's direct-action environmental organization (times-up.org)
Scientist Rebellion - Civil Disobedience for Working Scientists (scientistrebellion.org)
Stopping the Israeli war machine: Solidarity with the people of Gaza – international webinar (cnduk.org)
Climate Reality Project: What You Can Do (www.climaterealityproject.org)
A great breakdown of concrete actions, sorted by time commitment (all the way from 5 minutes up to “I want to go to Italy and train with Al Gore”).
U.S. Approves $500 Million for Bahrain Oil Project, Despite Opposition | The financing faced criticism that it doesn’t mesh with U.S. commitments on climate change. (www.nytimes.com)
Coverage of the advisers quitting over the continued financing of fossil fuel projects without giving them a meaningful chance to weigh in
Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco - The Past Didn't Go Anywhere (www.youtube.com)
How do I find organisations that support causes I want to fight for?
I want to be able to support the causes I believe in and actually be a part of the change I want to see but I was never taught how to find, join and work with these groups....
Democratic Socialists of America - Find your local chapter (www.dsausa.org)
A Word About Not Voting
We often don’t take the right not to vote seriously enough. For centuries, black people in America had to give their votes to white people who didn’t fully represent them and hadn’t earned their votes properly, until the Right Not to Vote Act of 1965 came along. At last, they had the power to refuse to vote for anyone...
A crowd set fire to a driverless Waymo taxi in San Francisco, as tensions about driverless tech grow (www.businessinsider.com)
Why do we even have to have this conversation in the first place (slrpnk.net)