this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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I don't think anybody is legitimately saying that voting blue is the end of the matter. Activism is way more than that--it's attending local board meetings and making yourself heard, getting involved with your local/state parties to push for change, communicating with your elected representative (even, and especially if, they disagree with your position), attending donstrations and protests, volunteering for your preferred candidate's campaign, voting, and most importantly--never giving up, even if it takes decades. If your preferred candidate loses in the primary, you immediately switch to the next closest candidate and start campaigning for them and pushing them towards your preferred policies. If a referendum you support loses, immediately start pushing for a similar referendum in the next election that tweaks the wording to avoid the reason why it lost last time. And so on, and so forth, across all the various levels of government.
This exact playbook is what got Roe overturned. Religious mutters pushed, and pushed, and pushed. They voted in lockstep for the farthest-right candidate in the primary, and if they lost in the primary they voted for the farthest right candidate in the general. They protested outside abortion clinics daily. They pushed and pushed, and over the course of 50 years they gradually transformed an entire political party from having roughly equal representation of pro-choice and anti-choice candidates to one where supporting a nationwide 15-week abortion ban with no exceptions is considered "moderate."
I think a lot of people actually are saying that voting blue is the end of the matter. When you ask people who hate leftists what they are doing besides voting for Biden, most have no answer.
Be fair. Abuse, gaslighting, condescension and baseless accusations are all answers.
Yeah, because they're lazy, and/or don't have the ability to wage a sustained campaign. That's the vast majority of voters on both sides--myself included, sadly, though in my case it's largely because I'm afraid that a furry getting involved in a campaign would do more harm than good. Did you think every (or even a majority) of single-issue pro-birth voters were on the picket lines? Hell no. Most voters cast a vote, maybe in the primary (but usually just the general election, and only in the presidential elections) and that's pretty much it.
And for the record, I absolutely don't hate leftists, I agree with the vast majority of leftist positions, and I think protesting and advocating like this is a critical part of creating change. I just feel like it's just as important to practice harm reduction and push from the inside, too.