The Mayor of Kenosha is a Democrat. As is the Gov. of Wisconsin.

When ppl scream "VOTE!" at protestors, I keep thinking: Vote!? For who?

For natl Dems & Repubs who are *both* screaming to fund the police & fund more war?

For local Dems who use police to wage war on protest? https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1300125010259070981

Have a hard time taking anyone seriously who looks at our problems & says, "Vote!"

The mayors of CHI, MSP, NYC, LA, Portland, Kenosha? Dems, one and all.

Dem mayors use cops to bash heads in. Not a single Dem mayor presides over a city where min wage = access to an apartment.

Ferguson happened under Obama, as did massive ICE deportations.

Biden/Harris promise more policing & militarism.

Local Dems waiver between being ineffective abt or antagonistic towards what's really ailing us.

What on earth does voting have to do with any of it?

Voting is irrelevant to these issues. There is no opposition party to our major problems. When Obama pops up just to squelch the Bernie movement & NBA strike, it's good to remember the excoriation to "VOTE!" is to stymy dissent & legitimize a system w/o political feedback.

I keep coming back to an analogy about abuse, or coercive influence. If an intimate partner threatens to beat up their partner if they don't do the dishes, and so they do the dishes, that's still abuse.

The Dems keep screaming "I'll beat you, if you don't vote for me!!"

The beatdown the Dems are threatening us with is Trump.

They tried this last time. It didn't work out!

Meanwhile, they are still abusing us, even if we vote for them—abusing us w cops, tear gas, incarceration, war mongering, denial of healthcare...True abuse, all around.

I am so confused by ppl who say, "We will vote for them and THEN hold them accountable!!!"

How, exactly, will that work?

The lack of insurance, the policing, the deportations, the privatization of the Post Office, all these causes "du jour" ain't new.

Linguistically, I am especially interested in how the excoriation to "Vote!" is being lobbed at protesters, as if their efforts can be delegitimatized by barking a single syllable command to do something any sentient person can tell will NOT address the things being protested.

No shade at NBA/WNBA players—but actually shutting down ball (labor, school, work, etc) by withholding labor would lead to change. Instead, we get a pivot command to "VOTE"...either for the party in power or the other one, both who are pro-cop, anti-worker, anti-earth?

The Dems looked at this moment—THIS moment!!!—and said:

- No healthcare for all, though most voters want it

- Let's pick the author of the crime bill & a prosecutor

- Let's give cops MORE $$

And they want us to take the idea of voting seriously?!

Like, do they think voters have forgotten that EARLIER THIS SUMMER, tens of millions rose up, and then *100* police depts—many from "blue" cities—rose up to beat the shit out of and GAS (!) Americans?

Voting can't change this. At all! https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/16/us/george-floyd-protests-police-tear-gas.html

Many a Dem mayor & gov (De Blasio, Cuomo, Newsom, Lightfoot, Bottoms, Frey, Wheeler etc.)have SHOWN y'all they'll use their cops to crack your skulls as quickly as Richard Daley did at the 1968 DNC.

And...they want (y)our vote? While not gaslighting, but ACTUALLY GASSING you?

Voting (nationally or locally) cannot address why you can't get an apartment on minimum wage, avoid the police arresting you for protesting, stop the foreign machine or get you healthcare. It just can't. It's not a feedback loop for things ppl want or need to stay alive.

What's somewhat frustrating is saying this aloud earns opprobrium for stating what is verifiably true. The Dems rarely take responsibility for not running candidates or ideas ppl want; they don't apologize for running a society based on war, police & necropolitical extortion.

Like Stuart Hall, I want to understand our world & problems as they really are—not as govt propagandists & too many sycophants in media say they are.

And we've no hope of understanding let alone changing policing (or anything) if we pretend Dems don't do what we seen dem do.

What's been somewhat heartening this year in the US & around the globe is how the virus has forced a broad consciousness-raising that a new politics of care is possible. But it has little, if anything, to do with voting. It requires a wholly different domain of politics.