I'm really getting sick of left-wing accounts telling people not to vote, often with some vague hand-waving at the "structural change" (or equivalent phrase) that's needed instead.

They don't specify any better means of accomplishing change, or attempt to explain why it works better, and offer examples of where it's working and how you can get involved. It's just: "Don't vote and change will come."

They don't offer any explanation of why this is an either-or choice; why it takes so much energy to vote that it would deprive people of the strength to take part in other actions (which, again, they don't specify).

They don't suggest any reason to believe structural change wouldn't be harder to achieve under the increasingly fascist, unaccountable government we'll get if Trump is re-elected.

Instead, it's just a general implication that if you vote, there's something shameful, even culpable about it; it's giving cheer to the enemy and fostering evil.

In reality, the same people who do the real work of trying to bring about structural change almost universally vote. To give the most obvious example, the main focus of the DSA is change via elections.

You will meet DSA people who believe you shouldn't vote for Biden. You will *not* meet DSA people who tell you not to fucking vote (I mean *real* DSA people, not anonymous accounts with a red rose in their handle).

Also, any activist seriously trying to achieve change by other means will talk about those means at every opportunity. They're not spending all their energy convincing you NOT to do things that are totally irrelevant to their work.

And under a more fascist government, the activists and union organizers, etc., who are doing the work of organizing by other means will begin to be imprisoned and/or killed. They will not be implementing structural change, they'll be dying in a cell.

Finally, this relentless focus on the pointlessness of voting makes me a little suspicious of any structural change undertaken by the anti-voting folks, who presumably don't believe in holding elections.