*I do want to mention that the author of the letter I reference here, and so many other people who are encouraging folks to vote for Cuomo on the WFP line, are, to the best of my knowledge, good people, smart people, and people who really want to help everyone and make a better world. I understand that, despite the fact that I come off as... slightly angry in this post.
Andrew Cuomo is, quite frankly, a bad person. He is not just a bad politician. He's a liar, a player, and overly ambitious. He's shown us that he cares about himself more than he cares about any random stranger on the street.
Andrew Cuomo is, quite frankly, a bad person. He is not just a bad politician. He's a liar, a player, and overly ambitious. He's shown us that he cares about himself more than he cares about any random stranger on the street.
And yet, "progressives" are encouraging us to vote for him.
Are you kidding?
They're not. And I get it. I get wanting to believe that what the Working Families Party did was good. It would be wonderful if the democratic party and WFP were good and could be reformed. But they can't. No party that sells out working people is a party worth voting for.
But a lot of people say that voting WFP (for Cuomo) is the best way to send a strong message and to get real results in fights that matter. (Fights like the one for publicly financed elections, a minimum wage raise, the decriminalization of marijuana and so much more.) This open letter is a perfect example of the effort people are giving to get Cuomo elected on the WFP line.
Go read it. It's pretty bad.
Real quick summary of most people's arguments: He's going to win, he might as well get as many WFP votes as possible, because it'll send him a message that we're expecting him to follow through on his promises.
Talk about defeat. Let me just make this clear. The only message Andrew Cuomo will receive if he gets a ton of WFP votes is that his strategy of bullying and manipulation works. We will have told him that he can threaten us into obedience.
My friends, that is NOT a message I want to send.
I want to address a few of the problems with that letter.
1. "Then the unexpected happened. Governor Cuomo caved. At the last minute, he pledged to push through Fair Elections. And that wasn't all. He agreed to a minimum wage increase with indexing. He agreed to pass the full, 10-point women's equality agenda. He agreed to push through the NYS DREAM Act. He agreed to marijuana decriminalization. He even agreed, remarkably, to help flip the state senate and push for a reunification of the IDC and the Dems -- making it easier to advance a progressive legislative agenda in 2015."
Problem: This is not unexpected. A democratic candidate for a democratic state was threatened with a challenger, so he.... agreed to agree to align with his own party? Wow, how monumental. He didn't even give a strong statement in support of the positions. he just said he would support them. He could have tattooed the platform on his body and it still wouldn't be enough because agreeing to your own party's ideals is the fucking baseline for running on that line. Cuomo did the bare minimum, let's throw him a spot on our line.
2. "There were those of us (like myself) who didn't think his promises were enough. Who argued passionately for Zephyr. Who were heartbroken and bitterly resentful when the WFP state committee voted -- in an admittedly transparent and beautifully democratic process -- to endorse Cuomo. It was, I believed at the time, a violation of our principles and everything we stood for as a party and as a movement."
Problem: The process underwent when the WFP decided to run Cuomo was the exact opposite of transparent and beautifully democratic. The vast majority of WFP voters wanted the party to run its own candidate. But it caved to threats from the governor and from unions (obviously not the rank and file members). I mean I guess that's beautifully democratic in a sense that that's how democracy works in America. But then, America doesn't have true democracy.
3. "Despite feeling somewhat vindicated by Zephyr's performance in the primary, I gradually came to understand that my position was a position of privilege. You see, I am blessed not to have to work for minimum wage. I don't have to struggle to make ends meet, to put food on the table. I don't have to worry about whether or not I will be able to afford college. If I am caught smoking marijuana, the color of my skin means I won't spend very much (if any) time behind bars. And so I began to realize that the endorsement I so resented wasn't at all the "selling out" of the party we helped to build. It was, instead, an emotionally challenging decision reached after many hours of difficult deliberation by a bunch of kind, caring, strategic individuals attempting to use their little bit of influence over the governor to make life better, in tangible ways, for millions of struggling New Yorkers."
Problem: I've heard the privilege argument from so many people. They say that real New Yorkers need change now, and being idealistic and hoping for something that can't happen and protesting doesn't get us anywhere near real change. If Cuomo will agree to support (so, at best, not go against) a fight for a $10 minimum wage, that's where we need to throw our support. Because it's not fair to ask for more when they're not the ones whose lives are at stake.
Well, my livelihood is at stake. I don't always know where my next meal is coming from. I lost my job a few months ago, and my life has become a constant struggle. When I got food stamps a couple of months ago, I nearly cried from relief. So fuck the argument that it's a privileged position to want more for NY. I honestly need to know if anyone bothered to ask low income people how they felt before making this claim. It is infuriating when people making a living wage do this act (wth good intentions, to be fair) to actually hinder real change.
I make about $600 a month. These bullshit political strategies to maintain power and maybe - maybe - get tiny changes or to get words of support from a governor who loves rhetoric but not action is not helping me. Want to know a privileged position? One that says dump your ideals and real problems and do what will keep the WFP alive. This argument feels to me more like "stand up for the poor people, they need us!" than "listen to and then stand up with the poor people, we all need each other!" And that is a very dangerous thing.
I think, if people truly examined their own privilege (me included, because I may be living in poverty, but, like the author of the letter, I'm not black. I'm not LGBTQ. I have privilege too.), they'd see that the single best way to change this state is to vote your conscience (which may mean not voting at all this time around) and more importantly, standing up, arms linked together, and demanding more. If we want to be realistic, this election isn't going to change things. Mass demonstrations are. Strikes are. People doing things together, not strategized BS elections, are the real change makers.
4. "You can throw your vote away on a protest vote for Howie Hawkins and the Green Party. Or, you can vote on the Working Families Party ballot line to hold Governor Cuomo accountable to his promises to raise wages, pass Fair Elections, and make New York State work for all of us."
Problem: I can't believe I have to even say this, but there is no such thing as "throwing your vote away." How incredibly cynical and undemocratic.
And a protest vote? Howie Hawkins' platform is almost identical to my own. He is the bravest and boldest candidate in this election. A Cuomo win will not produce tangible results (not good ones. I'm sure there will be tangible results as in more kids starving and things like that.), but a Hawkins win certainly would.
5. "As much as we all hate to hold our noses when we vote, and as tempting as it might be to vote green, this is a time when we need to be pragmatic more than idealistic."
Problem: Ah, the argument that is made every single election. We always choose the less of two evils, and we always get screwed over. After so many years of that, I need to ask, why in the world do you still believe this lie? Pragmatism has done nothing for me. We need to be more idealistic and more creative in our ways of fighting oppression. The claim that voting for Cuomo will achieve anything good is just absurd.
Honestly, I'm hoping that very few people vote on the WFP line. I'd like to see it go away, as it's nothing more than a puppet for the democratic party. This election, I'll either be voting for Hawkins or for no one.
If you want change, and you want things like a living wage, then you'll mix pragmatism and idealism and realize that voting for Cuomo isn't an acceptable thing to do and that voting for the lesser of two evils is not our only option. We can put our bodies on the line, invoke the spirit of revolutionaries before us, and get back to the grassroots. It is the only thing that has truly brought about positive change in this country.
_
Charlotte
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