I’m writing this weekend edition of the newsletter with my fellow American consumers in mind, knowing that we have a massive election in two days. I’m feeling anxiety, dread, anticipatory grief, and heartburn on a daily basis. Those are reasonable things given the stakes here but goodness, wouldn’t it be nice to not feel ill whenever we have an election?
I voted Harris-Walz on the Working Families Party ticket — for those who are unfamiliar, the WFP is more progressive and inclusive than the New York Democrats, who feel like moderates most of the time. This is the first year I haven’t phone-banked or volunteered for candidates. I’m not here to tell anyone how they should vote or if they should vote, I’m just going to share how I’m thinking and feeling (Scary! You thought spooky season was behind us).
I resent that electoral politics in America comes down to a ‘lesser of two evils’ choice, I don’t like that I don’t feel heard or seen as an Iranian American or a Muslim by most Democratic candidates, and I’m terrified at the blowback that people from South West Asia + North Africa will receive for abstaining to vote, or voting third-party. I wonder why some people can’t direct their anger and frustration towards a regime for their poor policies vs. marginalized people who are impacted by those same policies.
I understand why not everyone feels fired up to vote amidst a genocide, a climate crisis, mass xenophobia, constant threats on reproductive rights and the trans community… the list could go on for far too long, sadly. I wish we had shorter campaign cycles, I wish there were limits to how many hundreds of millions of dollars could be spent campaigning, I wish for so much of that money to be invested in local communities instead.
I’m sharing a few of the reads I’m consuming that I’ve found helpful — starting with this aptly-titled newsletter that my friend
recently shared:
One pull quote I’m thinking about after reading this: “It is better to think of even the politicians on your own side not as role models to be admired but rather as basically disreputable figures who are necessary to deal with but who should always be looked down upon and forced to prove, through action, that they are not pieces of shit.”
Something else that resonated with me was The Intercept’s collection of interviews with progressive voters on their conflicting feelings around voting in this election. If you feel heavy, scared, or anguished — you are not alone! There are lots of us going through this. As one interviewer says, “every choice is loss.”
I appreciated this essay from ociele hawkins that I found floating around social media on how they’re thinking about this election, and voting more generally.“It is both complicated and simple. Liberation is not voting. Voting is a tool. Liberation is the ability to lawfully declare and defend the full humanity of everyone. This election is not about liberation. No single election can or ever will be.”
“Each day I come to know even more clearly and urgently that we must commit to the fight for meaning. Not to concede the words, concepts, terms that we need to think and imagine and make livable lives.” Christina Sharpe’s The Shapes of Grief is on witnessing the unbearable, over and over again, something many of us have felt in recent years. I long to be able to write about grief in this way.
Finally, I have long admired Tatyana Fazlalizadeh’s artwork, and this piece called ‘Scream’ is followed by her thoughts and feelings about the election (click into the post to scroll through the carousel). I’ve repeated lines of this to myself all week, with “I want abundance. Not scarcity.” in particular lingering the most. We deserve so much more.
And finally, this gif is the closest thing to live footage of me writing this newsletter:
We deserve not to feel cognitive dissonance every time we’re at the ballot box.
A better world is possible. We have to keep fighting for it.
xo R
Love you ❤️thank you for sharing all of this writing