Become a Dam
Much of American life is feeling cornered. Cubicles, cul-de-sacs, and cars are just some of the ways that we are penned into tiny boxes that limit our choices. I know there is a “what came first the chicken or the egg argument” to be had here about the degree to which Americans demanded these boxes first before they widely proliferated. However, I am of the mind that these “innovations” were first designed and sold to Americans as conveniences. Yet, they were trojan horses that were thinly veiled methods of control. It’s only now that several generations of people have grown to middle age within the rot of this system that its obvious that the whole cubicles, cul-de-sac, and cars paradigm was about limiting your choices to ready-made, multinational-corporation produced objects and ideas.
It’s a surprise when you are able to exercise any free-thinking resistance to the plethora of false binaries that the government and corporations propose to you. Just think about the last time you walk down a street in a major American city. You are smacked in the face by advertisements. There are very few veneers where you can escape the commoditization of everyday life. Every surface is a potential sellable commodity and corporations and political campaigns are jockeying to get their message in front of you. You are inundated with pop up ads on your phone, leaflets on your door, and talking heads on the TV. All are united in the hope that you will turn off your brain and let them decide for you.
Ok, this is sort of a dark “They Live” take on living in a capitalist democracy, but I don’t think the picture I am painting is that far off from the truth. There certainly is a degree of freedom, but its largely been cloistered off into the consumer realm where one is free to choose what products they will consume, clothe themselves in, and surround yourself with. Longterm readers of my project will be familiar with this statement. As a sociologist, I am very concerned not just with the explicit colonization of black, brown, and asian nations, but also the colonization of everyday life where freedom is only equated with purchasing power. In the US, we don’t exercise our freedom of assembly, voting, or speech any where near as much as we exercise our freedom to consume and watch TV.
This is all an important reminder of the context within which we approach this 2024 election season. Many suburban liberals will be returning from brunch angry that they have to focus on anything except what their weekend plans. Many republicans will be indulging in a frothy-mouthed embrace of any of a number of far-fetched conspiracy theories and hope for a christian theocracy. The brain-dead folks who constitute these groups will hope you join them in turning off your brain and engaging in the never ending culture war that occupies their time. “VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO,” the liberals will cry. “ONE NATION UNDER GOD,” the republicans will scream earnestly. “ It’s the same as it ever was, the same as it ever was. Me, I am not engaging in an ounce of the doom-pilled battle between a chlorine-slurping cheeto-head or genocide joe. I am not dropping out completely, but I am just not going to get caught up in the whole spectacle.
Instead, I will be practicing a very specific campaign of actions to try to use the election to push Biden to the left. That’s all political battles constitute for me anymore. There is no grand hope of deliverance from some messianic political actor. Obama didn’t save us; neither could Bernie. No, there is just the numerous calculated actions that we powerless people decide to take in solidarity with one another to force our elected officials to do the right thing. In a world that seeks to lock us in cubicles, cul-de-sacs, and cars, all we have are these tiny moments where we are asked whether we will embrace life as a form of trench warfare where we dig our heals in to stop the killing, the wealth hording, and the war profiteering or just tune out into the warm light of our computer screens.
The specific question before me this week was how do I respond to the democratic primary ballot in Colorado where there is no viable alternative to Biden. At first, I was like, “Fuck it, I am not even going to vote.” Then, it occurred to me that this is precisely what the Biden administration wants us to do: turn off and go disengaged. I mean even many voices on the left are very actively talking about the futility of voting given a Biden/Trump rematch. Yet, both of those positions is ignorant to the creativity one can find in a trench warfare approach to voting in each election that comes up. Yes, we should make sure to vote, but do so with the creativity of making what civil rights leader John Lewis termed some “good, necessary trouble” that stirs the pot and prompts politicians to have to explain their ongoing support for the genocide in Palestine.
In making my decision on how to vote in my primary, I am inspired by two examples. First, I want to take guidance from Rashia Tlaib, the sole Palestinian American congresswomen in the United States, who urged her constituents to vote as “uncomitted delegates” in the upcoming Michigan primary as a vote of protest against the US’ continued support for Israel’s genocidal campaign of violence in Palestine. Second, I am inspired by the recently launched Vote Ceasefire project which aims to get democratic primary voters around the country to write in “CEASEFIRE” on their 2024 ballot. Over 1,531 New Hampshire voters wrote in Ceasefire in their primary in January.1 Both are examples of thinking strategically and creatively when approaching what can easily be considered a false choice in the democratic primary of voting for Biden or not voting at all.
Colorado has no write in option for this campaign, so I selected the noncommitted delegate option. Will this action change the course of the world on its own? No, but that is far from the point. In addition to email and faxing my representatives to call for a ceasefire, providing direct monetary contributions to those trying to escape the genocide, and educating others on the internet, this action is part of a larger, multi-pronged strategy of micro-movements that mark my resistance to my tax dollars being used to kill people. At each turn offered to me, I mark my resistance to the current policy being implemented to create a spectacle out of my lack of consent with the death machine.
It’s essential to use Aeran Squires and Kate Weiner’s concept of micro-movements when thinking about this voting decision, because it calls us into thinking about how small actions like this can be part of much larger shifts in our political consciousness and action. In a 2018 text they wrote for Loam, Aeran Squire and Kate Weiner describe a micro movement as a “small practice…that affirms our inherent power” in the face of a disempowering, “toxic capitalist culture” that doesn’t want us to believe that our everyday actions in alignment with our values do not accumulate into “bigger, bolder” actions that have the capacity to provide a bridge from the personal to the political domain, from personal transformation to political, structural change. This series of small actions sees me transforming myself into a single rock in a prospective pile that wills itself to become a dam, trying to block the flood of guns and missiles into israel’s hands. We all need to throw our rocks into the pile to become the dam that will stop the bleeding. No action is insignificant in such an approach. We need to be as open to take the small, bureaucratic actions as we are to show up in the streets.
I have talked about the concept of micromovements repeatedly in my work, most recently in the essay “I Have Plants,” as make repeated attempts at bridging the gap between personal actions and structural change.
That’s all for today. I hope you are safe and satiated where you are. All my best to you and yours, dear reader.
James
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/01/23/metro/ceasefire-cease-fire-write-in-nh-primary-protest-israel-hamas-war/ ↩
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