“If the purges [of potential voters], challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.”
"[…] Democracy can win* despite the 2.3% suppression headwind.
And that’s our job as Americans: to end the purges, the vigilante challenges, the ballot rejections and the attitude that this is all somehow OK."
Good. You’re not a genocide denier. We can have a conversation.
Do you suppose that the Democratic Party is worth saving anymore? Because I’m very much doubting so after the Biden administration.
That is a very hard question.
Just based on my experience, as I’m originally from a country that was going through, is still going through its Trump phase, it doesn’t matter. They will only get out of the way if they are forced to, and time and again they proved they are against third party candidates more than Republicans, and vice versa in fact, the Reps will hit you harder than the Dems if they see you usurping them. This is just as it was in my home as well. No enterprise to “force the Dems to quit” will work because the entire system will work against you.
The only way to break this that I’ve seen work is that people should join small local mutual aid groups, which are political in nature, but not partisan in the sense of being beholden to the big two. Like the DSA in the US I guess? And wait for the opportunity while helping others and sabotaging the worst excesses of the government.
Or do a revolution I guess, because contrary to what everyone says everywhere, some of them do in fact succeed in creating a better society. Even when they fail. Revolutions got rid of the divine right of kings, not “moderation and slow progress”, and revolution got rid of dictators like Ceaucescu as well.
How do we get from “small mutual aid groups” to “fix the genocidal two party system?” If the answer is incrementalism, it is no answer. Incrementalism got us here.
Radical change on the local level. Instead of trying to turn whole states by increment, turn towns and districts radically. Subvert federal decisions locally, and if you provide a schema for others to follow.
I’m still not seeing how working for my local food bank (the nearest pin on the map when I look up mutual aid. Next closest one is like 4 hours away) is going to get anywhere towards changing the bipartisan pro-genocide hegemony.
You can help people, shield then from government overreach and change their minds by talking to them instead of just shouting into a megacorp-censored online void.
That’s how the consies get people as well, churches being one of the last places you can socialise and discuss civics.
It will of course take a lot of people doing this, but that’s how organising people works. The alternative is doing a Luigi, but that has dire personal consequences.