Why the DNC Scares Me

*This post is deeply influenced and inspired by Angela Davis’ interview with Amy Goodman from this July*

I’ve had a stomach ache since the DNC. I’ve been irritable, short-tempered, emotionally fragile. This weekend, my mom asked me if I wanted to talk about what was going on. I nodded and started to list some aspects of my personal life — family stuff, a move across the country, covid loneliness, etc. And then I paused, and I realized that actually, my dominant feeling was deep rage. And grief. Mostly directed towards the democratic establishment and the conversation surrounding this election.

I was not raised to have strong feelings about politics. Strong opinions, for sure. But not to really feel what these policies were doing. Well, how can any one person truly experience the pain of hundreds of thousands of people in prison, separated from their families and treated as less than human for non-violent offenses, tens of thousands of immigrants in detention and millions deported, hundreds of unarmed Black people, Indigenous people and People of Color murdered by police with no consequences for killer cops, etc. Not to mention the climate crisis, US imperialism, our violently inadequate healthcare system, etc. It is too much to feel. So we shut down. We numb. We chant, “hope”, “change.” We vote. Repeat.

But this rage compels me to write. To invite others into rage and grief. Because in this numbness, I see us justifying inexcusable personal and political violence, and I have heard too many conversations over that last month about Biden’s “competency”. Seen too much the desire to move back into numbed out comfortability that Trump’s overt racism and facsist aspirations have disrupted.

To be clear — I will vote for Biden. But this vote is not about Biden/Harris 2020. It is about what we can do over the next 10 to 15 years if we don’t have to expend our energy battling a fascist dictator for the next 1 to 4 to 10 years.

An unclear election result or a Trump victory are both incredibly possible — and that is terrifying, for sure. If this happens, I do believe that many, many more people will be murdered by the state. The worst case scenario for Covid alone is 2 million deaths, and that doesn’t take into consideration all the people murdered at the hands of police, deported while sick with Covid or sent back to countries where the outbreak is just as bad as here, people who will die of hunger and other illnesses due to lack of affordable healthcare, shelter, food, or climate disasters. So yes, I do not want Trump in power in any way, shape or form.

And. I have no preconception that Biden or the democratic party care that much more about People of Color, Trans or Non Binary or Gender Queer People, Women, Poor People or anyone outside of the elite class. The hypocrisy of the DNC is the reason for my week-long long stomach ache. For those who think I am overreacting, or being too “radical”, I feel a need to give a quick run-down of the foundation of this country, and the ideologies that still govern today.

We all know (I hope) that this country was founded by colonizers looking for land and resources solely to accumulate wealth. They did this first by trying to take advantage of the Indiginous communities here, and then, soon thereafter, by murdering millions of Indigenous people. In his book, “Worked to the Bone: Race, Class, Power and Privilege,” author Pem Davidson Buck explains that when the colonizers realized that the Indiginous peoples would not be easily subordinated to work the land for the landowners’ profit, they began looking towards poor Europeans, predominantly Irish, and Africans who were initially brought to the West Indies to work as indentured servants. Over time, both Black and White indentured servants started to join together to resist their cruel working conditions and to protest the unfair distribution of resources in the early colonies.

Instead of creating a system where all people could gain access to land and resources, which would have been very possible then, just as it is very possible to do now, the landowning class decided that they needed a way to protect their ability to hoard wealth from the poor masses. They began by punishing Black indentured slaves more than they would White servants after people would run away or resist together.

This was their first step in creating the construct of Whiteness — indoctrinating poor White people into the belief that they were somehow more similar to the White slave and land-owning elite class than their Black and Indigenous counterparts. In order to enforce this belief, the landowning class would give certain rights and access to resources to White people that were denied to Black people. This included the right to bear arms, but there was still no real way to achieve significant upward mobility — though the myth of the possibility was being seeded. It also took incredibly violent means to culturally cement the differences between races — both Black and White people who showed class solidarity across race were tortured, maimed and killed in public forums.

Buck’s clear distillation (I recommend reading the whole 2 chapters linked above) of how the creation of Whiteness was used as a violent tool to divide poor and working class people in order to profit the wealthy elite is just the beginning of nearly every policy in this country. This can be seen, of course, in placing poor White people in the role of overseer during chattel slavery.

This continues today. And yet, our US history books in large part skip over the rest. Systemic racism is over, it would seem, particularly after the civil rights bill is signed. This of course, is not the case. And the little I learned about anything beyond the existence of pre-civil war slavery and the Jim Crow south (nothing about the north) is in and of itself how the elite class maintains its power. If we are not honest about what our country values — profit at the expense of human life, then it makes sense why so many people I know genuinely think that Biden is just a good guy.

But do people really think that Biden has any interest in helping the millions of people who are currently unemployed and without health insurance? If he did, why does he not support medicare for all? Do they believe that he cares about the immigrant workers who are forced to harvest the fields of California while giant fires ravage the land or in meatpacking plants with known Covid-outbreaks? Then why has he so adamantly resisted supporting an end to all detention and deportation? Do you believe that he cares about the people who have been in prison for decades for non-violent offenses and are now watching their years-long term turn into death sentences because of Covid? If so, why hasn’t he made any statements about releasing prisoners and detainees or apologized for his writing of the ’94 crime bill that made prison populations skyrocket? Does he care about a livable future for all of us? Why does he not support the very popular Green New Deal?

The liberal discourse around Biden is infuriating. It is not surprising, but I have such a deep desire for my friends and family to do better. To learn this country’s history. To see that Biden is through and through a continuation of the elite class undermining the rights of the working class and poor people for the sole gain of billionaires and the politicians they pay off. Biden will continue to make the prison industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the gas and oil industries trillions of dollars. And our entire planet and every inhabitant on it — you, me, everyone we love — will pay the ultimate price.

And to be extra clear, these policy decisions are not about being electable. The fact that Biden doesn’t support medicare for all has nothing to do with wanting to get the most votes. If he wanted to win democratically, he would unequivocally support medicare for all in a global pandemic where 30 million people have recently lost their jobs and therefore their healthcare. If Biden supported Medicare for all, polling shows that he would be in favor with 69% of voters. Instead he chooses the lobbyists and checks from the insurance industry and is neck in neck with Trump. He cares more about corporate gain than preserving democracy.

This is angering. Get mad.

And yes, vote for Biden to avoid Trump. But I beg of you, do not say you are doing it because Biden cares about working class people.

Personally, I am voting this year with deep hope that Biden is one of the last puppets of the billionaire class that is able to convince working class people that their interests align. I am voting knowing that the act of voting is a drop in the bucket of the work I am doing to ensure change in this country — That we will continue organizing and building millions of meaningful relationships over the course of the next ten plus years. That these relationships will lead us into powerful actions against the systems of economic and ecological destruction . That we will learn more together, and in that learning, we will be forced to really reckon, really feel, really heal from the pain that our country has been built on and perpetuates daily.

My political engagement is not about 2020 or even 2024. I am thinking about 2032 and beyond. Of all the truly progressive candidates who will, term by term, unseat establishment democrats through the organizing efforts of groups like The Working Families Party and Justice Democrats. The growing squad, as it were. I see a relationship between grassroots organizing and elected officials at a scale I’ve never experienced before. I see the elite class doing everything they can to maintain power while millions of people disrupt their ability to control the entire economy and political system. I see more mass uprisings, industry-wide boycotts, a general strike. I see young people, People of Color, Trans, Queer, Non-Binary people leading this fight, as they always have since European colonizers first set foot on this land. I see White people sitting with one another, reaching out for connection, as we unlearn systems of domination and supremacy. I see us growing shared language and shared ideology and standing together against racial capitalism and the accumulated wealth for the few.

I also see myself looking back on these words and laughing at how little I know now, and feeling deep wells of gratitude for all I and my many communities have learned over the course of the last ten years, and how much more will learn moving forward.

This weekend, I finally was able to release my pent up anger, and cry. My mom sat with me in our backyard by a fire, holding my hand. I first thought my internal unrest was about moving. I thought it was about missing friends. But as soon as I started talking about this political moment I realized how much I had been storing inside. I don’t normally share things like this with my mom, I reserve these feelings and conversations for my friends who are also organizers. Today, I realize that I don’t want to live in a world where my organizing life, family and friends feel separate from one another.

I can sometimes feel dismissed or demeaned for being “passionate about politics” in a particular way. I think I’m writing this because I need us all to see our stake in this fight. To see that we are all losing giant parts of ourselves by existing within and feeding systems that profit off of human suffering each and everyday.

Quite frankly, living under US capitalism sucks. My rage is not directed at individuals. It is directed at the systems that have robbed us of so, so much humanity. White people (particularly those who identify as upper class/upper-middle class/middle class or wealthy) may feel comfortable, but what is lying just beneath the surface of that perceived comfort is not seeing, not feeling the reasons why we can feel “comfortable”. So my challenge to you, is to feel this moment. To feel our country’s history. And as soon as it feels like too much, instead of shutting down, find support. No one should have to handle this alone. This means joining organized groups, political organizations, movement spaces, yes. And, it means late night conversations with loved ones. Hold your parent’s, your sibling’s, your friend’s hand. Maybe even cry.