The presumptive Democratic nominee has picked her running mate. Hillary Clinton played it safe and selected from the stale/pale/male pool of candidates and came out with Tim Kaine.
The Dems went into their Philly convention with plenty of chaos and drama. Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign after WikiLeaks released thousands of emails detailing how the DNC worked to torpedo the campaign of presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. Talk about full transparency of dirty tricks!
And what about the highly touted so-called progressive platform of the Democrats? It came out in the midst of all hell breaking loose in America. Police in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights had killed two unarmed black men. Two black, armed men had killed three Baton Rouge police and six Dallas officers respectively. As the temperature has heated up, so have tensions between the police and black communities.
Police violence in this country continues to spiral out of control. What did the platform say about black bodies falling in streets across the country at the hands of police? What did the Dems say about the unapologetic racist and violent culture of police departments around the nation? Nothing. Nada.
Maybe the Dems were hoping, with the illogical, Muslim-hatin’, Mexican-trashin’, racist views spewed at the Republication National Convention, that the Democrats would come across looking like logical, inclusive, forward-thinking beings.
Lest we forget it was President Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill that unleashed 100,000 new cops on working-class communities of color. The bill provided nearly $10 billion in funding for prisons, which accelerated the growth of the prison-industrial complex. The bill also expanded the death penalty. We have this Democratic president to thank, not only for mandatory life sentences, but also for doing nothing about the racial disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine.
So here we are, on the eve of another U.S. presidential election, having the cyclical discussion about voting for the lesser of two evils. Every time the discussion comes around, I remind folks that that we don’t have to settle for being battered back and forth between the two parties OR within the one party.
We could do something quite radical by creating an alternative. How about an independent political party or a labor party? We had the “Rent is Too Damn High Party.” (Its founder Jimmie McMillan endorsed Trump earlier this year, so I’m obviously not just talking about an independent party without sanity.) What about a Black Lives Matter Party or anti-gentrification Right to the City Party?
This is a time where the public has unprecedented documentation that both parties fight to represent the One Percenters, even though the majorities of both parties’ constituencies are working-class people. We get daily sucker punches of their double-teaming us – no affordable housing, stagnant wages, failing school systems, etc.
In November, your presidential choices are two One Percenters. Or you have Jill Stein with the Green Party. (Many still blame the 2000 Green Party presidential campaign of Ralph Nader for losing Florida and New Hampshire to George W. Bush, with disastrous consequences.) And then there’s Gary Johnson, Republican-turned Libertarian, on the ballot.
Alice Walker once said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Our first priority is acknowledging that collective power Sista Walker referenced. Once we embrace that reality, it will open our minds to new possibilities that can lead us to political empowerment and economic emancipation.
Political power is more than voting, although the vote is a mighty tool in the hands of an informed and engaged voter. Let’s stop holding our noses and talking about voting for the lesser of two evils. We have the power. We are the power.
