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Controversial Dem Candidate Graham Platner Says Anti-Trans Attacks Are “Invented Culture-War Scare” (www.them.us)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/queer_defense_front@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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[–] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Thanks for taking the time to provide a nice response. I believe in your autonomy and ultimately in your stance in a theoretical capacity.

In a useful, real world application I find not voting is bad praxis. I can't help but see it this way. It was bad before, Trump gets elected and now it's worse. I prefer bad to worse. I understand that in your frame partially accepting bad precludes the possibility of good. I do not know if complete certitude in either of our stances' correctness is possible.

At least I hope you are a civic participator working to secure rank choice voting or get subversively progressive folks on the ticket. Even if you can't stomach voting for harm reduction.

I guess what I really wish for is an end to or at least a significant reduction in the friendly fire in left spaces. If we can't all get on board with being on the same side, even if our means are different, we are so fucked. We should uplift strengths and operate in good faith. If you can't vote for a shitty liberal I can understand that. But I do expect you to be doing other things actively in the civic space to move our country in the right direction instead of waiting for the glorious conditions for revolution to naturally materialize.

That's really all I can ask for and all I can hope for. We all have different capacities and I think it is very important to see all of ourselves on the same side and for all of us to feel obligated to actively participate in moving the needle in some kind of capacity.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    I really appreciate yourresponse. I organize a local anarchist mutual aid group in my area. Mainly focused on helping the houseless and supporting protests. We are also working on expanding into other areas like supporting folks who are at risk from ICE, as well starting zine stuff. Ultimately we are aiming to develop grassroots structures to support people, and in the long term we wish to build structures of power separate from the government.

    Ultimately its not necessarilly a belief that good cant come from bad. I definitely think most of the time bad brings bad, but not always. Part of it is I feel that I am responsible for what those that I vote for do. Or at least what they promise to do before getting elected. In the case of Kamala, she would continue to support Israel's genocide and I wasn't willing to sacrifice Palestinians to protect myself. That and I conflict about whether or not it is really harm reduction? However this is something I feel I have to just figure out by myself at this point. I have heard the arguments for both sides of it and I just gotta figure out what I believe on the matter. The other part (which makes resolving that conflict hard) is that I believe voting for representatives legitimizes them, and thus the system they work for. I don't want to support a system that disempowers me by handing my power to politicians.

    Which yeah, all of that is largely principle and symbolic or abstract but I do believe that stuff to be important. Partly because symbolic acts still have impact. But also they are informed by my morals, values, beliefs, etc. Compromising on them is corrupting. The issue though is that in the dilemma around voting is that two different sets of values are in conflict. Harm reduction versus autonomy and self-determinism. Probably others but I have spent enough time as is trying to organize these thoughts for this comment.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    🫡 You're good people, thanks for taking the time. If you can spend even a little bit of time backing any initiative for ranked choice voting or grassroots political upstarts that participate in the mainstream discourse, I would be deeply grateful. No obligation, I'm some random internet nobody.

    Just a couple closing, non-committal thoughts here.

    I have worked in substance use as a therapist and I have come to believe that harm reduction is completely valid. Sure, that micro scale versus a macro scale is a different context. But regardless both of them are expressions of human nature or how we organize ourselves. I believe that harm reduction is legit. That doesn't mean that I have to think that the specific action smells like roses. I'm not personally down with Kamala and I'm not personally down with taking heroin as safely as possible. That's not what I want in my reality.

    But it's not really about what you or I want, it's about what the majority of people in society are able to get behind. If it was just you and I building a society this would be a non-issue. We would just build the type of structures that you are describing and then we would live in it and we would be happy.

    But we have to navigate a space safely where people don't necessarily believe in the theory that we are espousing. Maybe they are even knee-jerk reaction opposed to things that are new or different. Those are the people that I'm focused on. We have to create an appeal to folks who hear the word anarchy and immediately jam their fingers in their ears. We have to appeal to comfortable moderate Democrats who are fine with the way things are.

    I am trying to orient my messaging and my practice around the humans that we have today right here and right now. A lot of those people are not trying to hear what we are saying. Billions and billions of dollars are specifically being spent to make it look like we're actually doing something bad. I think it was more possible 50 or 100 years ago to grassroots ourselves into something better. The incredible power of the vested interests in sustaining the meat grinder versus hopeful do-gooders.

    I'm going to continue staying a hopeful do-gooder and I hope you do too. I'm not saying that you're wrong. I understand. But I do think you should still vote. And that's okay. If we both genuinely are working as hard as we possibly can to make the world a better place something will come of it.

    So again I appreciate your time and let's keep the left fighting the right not ourselves. 💪💪 Peace my friend.

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