Locating Hope Outside of an Election
On Palestine, the United States, and not voting for president.
Some housekeeping: I’ve had a couple new things published since the start of the year. “Mental Health Benefits” is a short story about ghosts, depression, and white collar exploitation under late-stage capitalism, and you can read it at Coffin Bell. “Abandon Your Gender” is a rallying cry for every cis girl to irreversibly damage themselves by joining the other team and embracing manhood, and you can read it in So To Speak’s 2024 print issue.
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I haven’t written anything about Palestine because I am not an authority on the subject, and there are other voices that should be listened to over mine. But it has become difficult to write about other nonfiction topics, because everything else feels trivial or, at best, non-urgent in comparison. Palestine, and the way my government’s actions in Palestine have exposed the exponentially swift unraveling of so many other life-supporting societal systems that I used to take for granted. It has been a hugely positive few months in my personal life, contrasted with witnessing unbearable suffering every time I check the internet. Hard to reconcile. And even though very few people read this blog, even though I don’t have any kind of real platform, I can’t not write about what is happening. I can’t pretend that life has been normal these past six months when it has been anything but.
My wife hates it when I start out any piece with a disclaimer, but because this topic is so charged I feel compelled to say at the start that the essay below is not primarily aimed at anyone who still needs to be convinced that what Israel is doing is unjustifiable. As I said, I’m not an authority on this subject, and I have no special insight. It is mostly a collection of links to people doing a better job writing about this issue than I can, and some thoughts on how the past four months have changed my perspective on voting (and my participation in democracy more broadly). If you are an American working through feelings regarding how you will vote in the presidential election, or if you have been struggling to find the words in discussions with loved ones about how you will vote, maybe you will get something out of it.
I don’t feel qualified to write in great detail about the genocide itself, but it is not hard to find firsthand accounts from Palestinians documenting the horrors they have faced since October 2023 (and the apartheid conditions Israel has subjected them to for many decades prior). I recommend the writing of Mosab Abu Toha and Al Jazeera’s coverage. This piece from five Palestinian writers on what it means to be Palestinian right now is also excellent, and Decolonize Palestine is a great educational resource. This blog post has collected many social media accounts for Palestinian journalists and organizations.
The Palestinian struggle for life and liberation matters far more than the outcome of one American election, but the question of this outcome has been impossible to ignore and will only get further omnipresent in our lives as November draws closer. It is obvious from the way the Biden administration and most national Democratic politicians have been acting that they did not expect America’s cozy relationship with Israel to have much of an impact on the loyalty of their base. Obvious that they believe they’ve left us with no other choice, the same smug logic that has guided national Democrats for my entire life. They seem to be willing to bet the future of American democracy on this logic, despite all evidence signifying that the loyalty of their base has found its limit. I know I have found my limit.
Lately I have been resigning myself to the real, likely possibility of Trump being elected in November. That election would no doubt deliver disastrous consequences for American democracy, for Ukraine, and for my personal civil rights, possibly my personal ability to access gender-affirming care or exist as a trans person in public. And yet if the election were held tomorrow, I wouldn’t vote for Biden, even knowing that throwing my vote away would help usher in Trump. In the event that Biden would win regardless of my vote, I have zero faith that he would prevent any of the outcomes I fear from a Trump presidency–he won’t do what it takes to stop the Supreme Court, and he has already shown how willing he is to bend over backwards to Republicans on everything from immigration to climate change. I’m sure that a second Trump presidency would find fresh ways to horrify and endanger me, but at least progressives might be motivated to actually fight Trump policies where they won’t fight Biden.
But really, the entire paragraph above is a moot point, because I have discovered myself to be a single-issue voter, and that single issue is genocide. I refuse to value my personal civil rights over the tens of thousands of lives snuffed out by the IDF with the full backing of and cash from the Biden administration. To insist that Trump would be worse on this issue than Biden is to avoid reckoning with the fact that Biden has been a zionist for decades, and it is ignoring the bloodshed that Biden’s administration has had a direct hand in. ‘Lesser evil’ is a meaningless phrase when it comes to the slaughter of children, the leveling of universities, the ongoing settler violence and apartheid state that Biden has blessed. If he cares more about supporting the Israeli state than he does about the survival of American democracy, let him face the consequences of that choice.
If Biden loses, a second Trump presidency would likely be far more dire than the first. And yet I am not entirely pessimistic about the future. My trust in my government is nonexistent, but social movements give me hope. What triggered me to write today was watching this video of Pro-Palestine activists interrupting Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s recent town hall meeting (source):
It’s hard to articulate what I find specifically electrifying in this video. I think it’s the activists’ conviction, the passion in their words even when they are removed from the meeting, even while others in the meeting shamefully try to shut them up. I am moved by the determination of this movement, the willingness to go against the grain for months on end, the sheer numbers of people who see this genocide with clear eyes. Living in New York, I see graffiti and stickers advocating for a free Palestine everywhere, and there are protests and actions happening nearly every day. The numbers of the “Vote Uncommitted” movement have been incredibly successful. And I have not stopped thinking about Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation—his last words, the statement “this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,” seem to reach deep inside my chest and shake something loose each time I hear them.
The political history of the last twenty years—from the ‘00s anti-war movement to Occupy Wall Street to Standing Rock to the Parkland gun control activists to Black Lives Matter to police abolition and so many more, movement after movement that has been at best co-opted and defanged and ignored, at worst criminalized or brutally repressed—should have taught generations of Americans that protest is futile, that authority won’t bend to social movements, and that your lost cause won’t be worth the police brutality you could face for acts of civil disobedience. And yet when I look around me, people (especially young people) seem to be more activated than ever. The lesson of futility doesn’t seem to take.
I see every institution with power ignoring the movement to free Palestine, ignoring the interruptions to everything from the Oscars to the New York Times front offices, pretending that life in America in 2024 is perfectly normal, because this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. This results in a disconnect that sometimes makes me feel like my tether to reality has frayed, but I am grounded by those around me loudly stating the truth that nothing about this is normal, that nothing about this situation can be allowed to continue. The Democratic party might ignore this movement, like they have ignored or sidelined every other movement in my lifetime, and if they do it should spell their downfall. Not that I expect them to learn anything from a loss in November, because they never do, but perhaps if more progressives divest from the Democratic party then–forgive me for this phrase, but I think it’s apt–the power of the people can grow.
A sentiment you see repeated in many activist circles is this notion that since we can’t rely on the state we must invest in each other, in community and activism and social justice, to build alternative networks of safety and power. I have always appreciated this idea but found it hard to believe in a literal sense, because it is hard to imagine activist networks growing the capacity to do even a fraction of what the state can do. And while I am still skeptical of community networks being able to replace state entities, I have to put my hope in this idea, because I have no hope in the state anymore.
I find more reason to hope if I let go of a literal framework. To abandon the state, to abandon the establishment, is to step into the unknown, the un-funded, to put our trust in each other at a time when we are all increasingly isolated from one another. It’s to put our faith and our resources into an idea that doesn’t fully exist yet for most of us. Full existence in a literal sense–with organizations outside of the state building social safety nets, education, etc–might not exist in my lifetime, but investing in each other and in social movements can build networks to keep people safe even when our leaders have, through negligence or with purpose, allowed fascism to flourish.
The only alternative, for me, is complete nihilism–which I do feel quite close to on any given day, but the unflagging determination of the movement to free Palestine won’t let me fall into the trap of believing nothing matters. How could I throw up my hands and shut down when Palestinians have never stopped fighting? This world is home to so much power, creativity, kindness and bravery that is locked out of participation in any political institution. Regardless of what one American president does to fuck up one election, we will continue to channel this power to take care of each other and build a better world.