cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21819748
Mona Mawari
Thu 24 Oct 2024 10.46 EDT[Please read the entire article - it is very thoughtful and informative. With her record on Gaza and Lebanon, voting for Harris will be difficult for millions in the US. --PL]
Not just in Michigan, I'm in Pennsylvania and I'm staying home.
No one should be upset that [some] Arabs and Muslims are not voting for the Democrats. The Democratic Party doesn't need our votes and they made it clear to us. They care about white suburban voters and former Trump voters. I told my representative a year ago if the genocide doesn't stop I am not voting, she responded back with a long email about Israel's right to defend itself. I still feel a punch in my gut every time I remember her response.
This could be a good opportunity to explore 3rd party and independent candidates that could really use your vote. There are some small benefits to voting 3rd party or independent over staying at home. Helping get a party to 5% popular vote gets them some public campaign funding in their next general election. It also shows the two Major parties that you are willing to vote, but you don't like their platform. -That's worth something. Lastly, politicians in the major parties like to co-opt policy ideas that originated in smaller parties. Did you know that AOC's previously proposed Green New Deal idea did not originate in the Democrat party?
I wanted to vote third party but I read that the Democratic Party got third parties banned from the ballot. I guess if there’s a write-in option I still might.
In some states the major parties got certain candidates banned. Here in indiana the Green party is banned even as a write-in (try to make that make sense) but Cornel West as an independent is accepted and so is PSL candidate Claudia De la Cruz. In Georgia Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz are banned while the Green Party's Jill Stein is allowed. It's worth checking out each candidates website to see which states they have "ballot access"...
[addendum] I feel like i'm committing an injustice if I don't mention the Libertarian party which also has ballot access in every state, though I adamantly disagree with them.
I would tell you to vote for PSL but the anti-Democratic party won their court case to ban their opponents from the elections in Pennsylvania.
Edit: you can vote for the Green party to show the Dems that you are willing to vote, but not for their policies.
I didn’t know I can still vote for the Green Party, I thought they managed to block all third parties not just PSL.
I have to ask then, what are your feelings on Trump and Vance's comments that they want to deport everyone who isn't blatantly white, regardless of their citizenship status? I understand your frustration with the US Government, and this has been a long-standing issue across both parties to support Israel at all costs when we get pretty much nothing in return, but the Trump party is chomping at the bit to create a white nationalist country and put everyone else in internment camps. If you lose all of your rights as a citizen, how would you be of any help to the Arab and Muslim nations then?
I'm a white guy, the only way Trump's administration is going to impact me is by the massive increase in cost of everything since his only concept of an economic plan is to tariff everything, but I'm still scared of what he's threatening to do to everyone else. If we keep him out of office then maybe nothing changes or maybe we have a chance to try and fix things, and that's the best-case scenario that I can see right now.
I hated and feared Trump enough to vote for Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Now I am indifferent to what he might do to me personally. I am no better than the young girl who was filled with bullets or the young boy who burned alive with weapons Biden sent Israel. I personally have accepted that if I am lucky I am next, and if I am not lucky I will live to continue witnessing it without being able to do anything about it. Losing my citizenship, being deported, being thrown in a prison camp or tortured, doesn't scare me or concern me anymore.
I don't know if I am communicating clearly how dead I feel or not. Biden made me want to leave and want nothing to do with the US in a way Trump never did despite my fears.
I think I get the idea. It's bleak and you feel like there's nothing you can do to change what's happening. I'm sorry you feel that way and maybe at some point things will change for the better. That's how I keep pushing forward, just looking forward to what might be in the future. During the Obama administration it felt like we were actually becoming better as a nation, more accepting of others and their differences, more willing to reach out to our neighbors. The only way I see things starting to get better again is to squash this notion that it's somehow ok to polarize the whole nation to hate each other, and maybe then we'll be able to start trying to help others again. Hope keeps us going.
