Its Power Seems Inescapable

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It’s election season in 2024, but with both parties clamoring to “strengthen the southern border” and remaining firm in their support of the invasion of Gaza; “representative democracy” feels even more hollow than usual.

This article does not ask us to vote or not to vote. The position of this article is that, with the Electoral College system in place, individual votes in presidential elections matter very little. Instead, the purpose of this article is practical advice: what can we, as disenfranchised progressives even do?

• ESims for Gaza/BDS/Supporting Palestinian Families

The Israeli military has attempted to cut occupied Palestine off from the rest of the world by making cell service and wifi unreliable. Buying and managing an eSim can give a Palestinian family access to cell data, evacuation lists, and embassy contact. More information on this, along with advice about Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction actions can be found at: palestinetoolkit.org
The authors of that website have compiled a well-organized, well-documented list of resources for what can be done to alleviate some of the pain in Gaza.

• Supporting Sudanese Families

It hasn’t made anywhere near the amount of headlines, but Sudan is also going through a genocide of its own, perpetrated by proxies of the United Arab Emirates. sudanfunds.com has a more in-depth dossier on the situation, and links to support individual Sudanese families.

• Voting Down-Ballot

While the outcome of the presidential election may not change our living conditions, paying attention to your local mayoral, state senator, sheriff, and city-council member elections can do a lot of good. It is possible for a concerted voting effort to cost an outright reactionary like Kelly Armstrong or Julie Fedorchak a position of power, which would be a substantial win.

• Remembering to Take Care of Yourself & Your Community

It can be easy to become dispirited as our government commits atrocities in our name, but in times like these it pays to keep in mind the old Le Guin quote, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”*
We will eventually win, dear friends. It is just a matter of surviving until then.

^{*Ursula K. Le Guin – Speech in Acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Nov. 19th, 2014}