Lesser Evilism Sucks

Hola everybody,
As I type, the TV machine is announcing that Trump has won Florida. He’s also won Ohio -- two major battleground states.

That sound you hear? That’s the collective clenching of the anal sphincters of millions of Hillary supporters -- you know the “pragmatic progressives.”

The NY Times is saying that Trump has a 92% chance of winning the election.

Wow!

Lesser Evilism Bites You in the Ass

What this says is that a DNC masquerading as “republican lite” is not resonating with the US public and highlights the failure of a two-party system that’s under the thrall of corporate dominance.

The one possible good thing that can come about from a possible Trump presidency is that it will be easier to mobilize people. It will finally convince many that the lesser of two evils has been a huge failure that we cannot continue down this road if we want to fight corporate dominance.

Really…

More later.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [An Open Letter to Moral Conformists]

Hola mi gente,
Enough is enough. Every day, my social media streams are inundated by posts by cowed, fearful, and at times positively rabid Hillary Clinton supporters. To paraphrase a meme I saw today: pointing out Trump’s faults does not make a case for Hillary. 

The following is for those who profess to be liberals or progressives and who are voting the conservative candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Pathologizing Dissent

 

“Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
 -- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Almost every day I have to suffer through yet another post appearing on my stream by the Working Families Party of New York (WFP). Having first endorsed Bernie Sanders, the WFP now wants people to vote on their line. Their presidential pick? Hillary Clinton. 

A little bit of self-disclosure: during the early days of the WFP, I was an organizer for them. I spent many nights in NYC’s gulag, Far Rockaway, going door-to-door in the projects there and I spent a few months organizing in my old Brooklyn neighborhood, Bushwick. Ironically, I also assisted with organizing a huge accountability session that included Hillary Clinton who, at the time, was running for the New York State senate seat. At the time, I thought the WFP was a great idea. 

The WFP took a grassroots guerilla warfare approach to local elections. Basically, we presented a slate of policies and asked local politicians if they would commit to publicly endorsing them. The effective part was being able to demonstrate to politicians that we could get a few thousand people to vote. That usually put the fear into them. It was a very effective approach, and I have to admit that the WFP did some good work in those early years.

However, today’s WFP is not the WFP of yesteryear and has, in my opinion, made some very suspect decisions, culminating with the decision to endorse Cuomo in the last gubernatorial race. It was a decision that threatened to rip apart of the coalition. I left the WFP for several reasons, one being that while it used a grassroots model of organizing, its decision-making process was very hierarchical (not grassroots). We did the organizing, but the ultimate decisions about direction and strategy were made by a few people.

And this is why it bothers me that the WFP is endorsing Hillary Clinton. I see that decision, as with the Cuomo endorsement, as a way to garner more votes on their line. The more votes a political party garners, the better access it has to power. So, a political entity with the words “working families” in its title, is endorsing a candidate who used racial stereotypes to pass legislation that gutted social safety nets for the most vulnerable in our society and advocated for a trade treaty (NAFTA) that erased millions of jobs for working families. This is the same candidate that that is on record as saying that the TPP -- NAFTA on steroids -- set the gold standard on trade treaties.

Think about that.

I have previously written about why I could never vote for Hillary Clinton. Others have also written why Black and Latinx people should not vote for Clinton. Therefore, reiterating a case against a Clinton administration will not be the purpose of this post. Let me put it this way, the last time the Clintons were confronted with a recalcitrant GOP congressional majority, they turned tail and helped pass some of the most pernicious, ultra-conservative policies.

But point this out to a Hillary supporter and after reflexively barking out “Trump,” it only elicits contempt. I am not realistic, they say. I am too idealistic. They are proud “pragmatic progressives” -- the adults in the room -- they sneer. The thing I find particularly disturbing is how an empirical observation such as that a ruling elite, primarily corporate in character, exists and exists for its interests and not the interests of the people, is stigmatized by so-called lefties as the ravings of unhinged misogynists. I am embarrassed -- no offended -- that there are people advocating for a strategy that discourages people from using their vote to organize and support viable alternative voices, and instead encourages people to give up their power to a right wing, neoliberal, corporate-controlled politician with the hopes that they will somehow push her to the left once she ascends into power.

Hope, my friends, is not a strategy. At least it is not a winning strategy.

Hillary is the poster child of everything that’s wrong with the Democratic Party and what the faux liberal Hillary supporters don’t seem to understand is that this election is really about disgust with the current status quo. This is the main reason why Hillary is barely beating out a childish narcissist who can’t even run a coherent campaign. People don’t trust her with good reason. People don’t like her, not because she is a woman, but because she hasn’t earned that trust. We on the left should see this election as a clarion call to organize, to support progressive third parties, to speak out against a dystopian status quo in which people find themselves barely keeping their head above water. People are drowning. The time for short-term fixes is long past. It is time for change and it seems that the reason Hillary Clinton has some of the lowest favorability and trust numbers is that the Democratic Party holds no attraction presenting itself as a bullshit “Republican Lite” alternative. In fact, I would submit that Hillary has nothing but contempt for the common people -- the unwashed masses.

We should be encouraging people to vote strategically, lending their franchise to progressive third parties. For example, people dismiss the Green Party because it can’t win. But if the Green Party could garner at least 5% of the popular vote, it would qualify for millions in federal funds. Shit, 15% would have compelled the duopoly to allow a candidate like Jill Stein at the debates and there would have been discussions about climate change, inequality, poverty, and an economic structure that benefits the majority, not just those lucky enough to be born rich. Instead we got a series of bad reality shows that were obsessed with grabbing pussy and Benghazi.

But instead of calls to organize, or the will for marginalized communities to take power, what I’m hearing from so-called progressives is that we must vote for war, privatization, inequality, mass incarceration, and corporate dominance in order to achieve goals that are exactly the opposite. What we will get is a more right-wing version of Obama -- quite possibly eight years of it. Can we afford it?

It. Makes. No. Sense. 

What do you honestly expect to achieve if the candidate in office, regardless of who they are, has nothing to fear? The DNC has nothing but contempt for progressive ideals and knows you will vote for them out of fear regardless of their record.

Those advocating for Hillary are the living example of the definition of insanity: committing the same acts and expecting different results. I’m not trying to convince people on how they should vote, but don’t fuckin' tell me that voting for Hillary is a road to anything amounting to change. The historical record refutes anything you say. But instead of looking at the evidence, some want to practice a form of magical thinking they have the nerve to call “pragmatic.”

The time to fight is now. If not now, when. If not you, then who?

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Why I Cannot Vote for Hillary Clinton

Hola mi gente,
Please consider supporting my writing by donating HERE. If you can’t donate, consider sharing the link with your contacts. Thank you.

I’m Not With her

Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Letter from a Birmingham Jail

I am not voting for Hillary Clinton. My decision isn’t because of some imagined misogyny on my part or because I dislike her personally. It isn’t based on the scandal around her emails or because of some concern over her character, though those are concerning. No, my reasons for not voting for Hillary are pretty much straightforward: I vehemently disagree with her ideology.

My core values centered on economic and racial justice shape my own politics. History shows those values do not shape hers. Even with her current concessions to the Sanders campaign (which will most likely change) nothing Clinton says or intends to do if elected will fundamentally transform the circumstances of the most vulnerable in this country. Like the rest of U.S. politicians, he is a corporate neoliberal cheerleader intent on maintaining the status quo. I have had my fill of them since before Clinton, pt. 1.

What in Clinton’s history demonstrates she is a substantive alternative to the status quo? How would her position on free trade, for example, or her view of foreign policy, and on immigration change our course as a nation? Hillary supporters constantly bring up the specter of what our world would like with Trump as president but have been mostly quiet with the fact that Hillary, in her advocacy of one of the worst, most racist crime bills ever signed by a president, basically called black children super predators who needed to be “brought to heel.” Taking that as context, her call for “common sense policing” in the face of the state-sanctioned murders of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people is scary. How will her presidency transform the conditions of my black, brown, and First Nation people?

Given the state of the country and of black and brown communities, these questions must be asked. But many Clinton supporters are downright contemptuous or label them as part of a left out of touch or irresponsible. For supporters of the Clinton campaign, those who dare to ask these questions, people like me, demonstrate that we don’t understand the incremental nature of US politics or that we have crossed over into some forbidden realm of politics.

Ironically, when Republicans reject Trump on ideological grounds, it is widely applauded. When establishment conservatives argue that Trump isn’t a true conservative, and that they will not vote for him, it is seen as reasonable. But to argue something similar about Clinton is immediately dismissed. We are labeled as “privileged,” a racist implication that is the height of hypocrisy considering we’re talking about a privileged white woman who has a cruel history when it comes to black and Latina women and children.

This is revealing in that in strips away the thin veneer of a robust democratic national dialog. In a historical period in which the center has moved to the right, there isn’t even room for talk (let alone action) for genuinely progressive politics left of center. The political spectrum in the US spans this warped center to the far right and this is the legacy ensured by the Democratic Leadership Council that was championed by the Clintons. Clinton our only viable option is we are told. Get behind her or risk the future of the nation, they say, resembling political Chicken Littles.

This narrowing of the political discourse joins forces with an easy form of identity politics. Many extol the fact that Hillary Clinton would be our first woman president. But, beyond the symbolism, what would that mean for women at home and abroad? As with the election of Obama, Many felt good about the idea of a black president. Now, as Obama prepares to leave office after eight years, African American communities lay in ruins, and we continue to find ourselves engaged in this haunting ritual of grieving in public for another black life snuffed by the police.

It is not enough that Hillary Clinton might be our first president with a vagina. Symbolically that would be significant, but the more important question rests with how her economic policies would affect the lives of working, poor women and children here in the United States and around the globe. How would she shift the frame of US aid policy and its impact on developing countries? How might her hawkishness affect the lives of vulnerable women and children? If none of that matters, then, as the sister, Daughter of Oya, states:

If your feminism holds more space for a racist genocidal imperialist than it does for an entire planet full of women suffering under the barbarity of the system she [Hillary] has dedicated her life to upholding, then your feminism is trash, it’s not going to get you free, and you need to get it together.

In fact, anti-racism and anti-sexism have become easy positions for neoliberal political elites. Today, perhaps understanding that calling black and Latinx children sociopaths would be political suicide, Hillary speaks with ease of “implicit bias” with regard to police brutality. One would gather that she expressing solidarity with people of color, and some assume that her policies reflect her rhetoric. On closer examination, nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, her top advisors are lobbyists for the private prison industry. It’s just the latest instance of pandering that changes little and allows a few people to feel good about themselves.

I am not saying that anti-racism or anti-sexism (or identity politics in general) don’t matter. But they can’t provide cover for business as usual -- a version of neoliberalism dressed in a multicultural Chanel pants suit.

Finally, the best a Clinton supporter can offer as a reason to vote for her is not anything that Clinton brings to the table. Rather, it’s him. The most persuasive reason to vote for Hillary Clinton is Donald Trump. Trump is worse. I know that. The prospects of a Trump presidency -- what would be a deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance -- ought to frighten anyone. It frightens me. But as the candidate who I will be casting my vote for, Jill Stein, has correctly pointed out, what we fear from Donald Trump, we have already seen from Hillary Clinton.

But what I have a very hard time understanding, especially form people who call themselves progressives living in New York, is why they would cast a vote for a candidate who is to the right of Ronald Reagan on many issues. It’s the Electoral College, stupid. Hillary is certain to win New York, that’s a done deal, why are you voting for a pro-fracking, pro-free trade, pro-mass incarceration candidate unless that is where your values actually reside?

Here is a piece of adult-like wisdom, my friends: we can’t continue to live with the current level of income inequality. Hard working people are working longer hours for less pay. And politicians like Hillary Clinton and their benefactors continue to argue for trade policies that have decimated the working class in this country. We can’t continue to lock up black and brown people or watch them killed in cold blood by people sworn to protect us or fail to publicly educate all of our children. We can’t continue, as Hillary’s record shows she will, to bomb people around the world into oblivion.

We can’t even begin to entertain a robust idea of the public good when filthy rich people believe that the only role of government is to facilitate the transfer of public dollars into private hands, and the function of politicians is to make us believe that it is in our best interest that we allow such a thing to happen.

In the final analysis, Donald Trump is simply an indication of the rotted heart at the heart of this country. But so is Hillary Clinton. That fact alone cannot be the only rationale to support Hillary Clinton. Something more substantive is required of us -- of her.

I am not with her. I will not vote for her. I will vote down ballot, focusing my attention on congressional, state, and local elections. And I will post my vote for Jill Stein. I refuse to support a political machinery that repeatedly turns its back on my people and the most vulnerable in this country, because people have been led to believe they have nowhere else to go. That false belief betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of this period of democratic awakening.

Fear is not enough. I have fought all my life so that I could live a life not based on fear and what is ugly and cruel. I have fought to live a life based on love and what is good in all of us. We find ourselves in a moment in history, in which the very life of the planet hangs in the balance. Running around in fight or flight mode, our collective amygdala on fire, is not the way to go.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The Evil of Two Lessers

Hola mi gente,
One of the proudest moments in my professional life was being recognized in 2012 by my peers for my advocacy work. As many who read me know, Citizens against Recidivism will be holding their annual awards dinner Saturday, October 22 at The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Center.

I would like to give a shout out to this year’s honorees:

Donna Hylton & Laura Whitehorn

Johnny Perez & Dinah Ortiz

Andre Ward

Darryl Johnson

Michael Pass

If you’re going, consider purchasing the tickets from yours truly. I will hand deliver the tickets wherever you want if you buy them from me (cash only). Drop me a line and let me know.

The Evil of Two Lessers

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.
 -- Marilyn Ferguson

No, I didn’t watch last night’s debate because I refuse to support corporations that stand to make profits while they make a mockery of our electoral process. Period.

It’s really hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that this was one of the most watched debates in the history of POTUS campaigns. 

It’s as if the US electorate was looking forward to an honest, enlightened and enlightening discussion of the important crises of our time, and how best to resolve them, by two dedicated public servants with a desire to help others and save the world, each of whom will use their best understanding of the actual facts and logical argument to persuade the electorate that they have the most compelling plan to achieve their vision of the future, as well as clearly explaining why their vision of the future is something we should all look forward to achieving.

There are many reasons why I will not be voting for Hillary Clinton. I’ll put it this way: What we fear from Trump, we have already seen from Hillary Clinton. I will expand on this in the comings days, but just know that eight years of Hillary would be a disaster.

I will I will be supporting and voting for Jill Stein and other genuinely progressive candidates, and I hope you will consider a similar strategy. I will say this much: the prevailing narrative, masquerading as “sensible” or “adult,” of the lesser of two evils, is the opiate of the masses. Hillary will be a horrible candidate who will continue the same policies that redistribute wealth upwards and advocate for endless war. If you believe otherwise, please contact my people. I have a bridge for sale.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…