There is a civil war within capitalism. Kamala Harris is the face of corporate power. Donald Trump is the mascot of the oligarchs. Either way, we lose. – Chris Hedges
There is no lesser evil when it comes to supporting genocide. There is no scenario where a crisis isn’t already here.
Although I can’t vote in the US presidential elections, I, too, like so many of us, have been thinking a lot about a moral compass that would guide me in a scenario where I would be able to cast my vote.
I must admit that I was looking around – and looking up – to those who I have seen having moral compasses unshaken by the desires and indoctrinations of the empire. I might have found something that resonated with what I myself seem to have been keeping somewhere in my body (a mix between the head and the heart).
This post is not to sway you one way or another. It is to share with you what I’ve found. I also found it in the format of one interview, so powerfully summarised.
It was said by someone I deeply admire: Noura Erakat, an American-Palestinian human rights attorney, legal scholar, author, and activist.
I couldn’t support more – or put it more eloquently – what Noura has said in a conversation with Briahna Joy Gray recently.
I invite you to watch the full video here and a short excerpt if you don’t have much time right now:
We won’t be in crisis if Trump wins.
We are already in crisis.
We have to act like it.
This is just one of the important reminders Noura shares with us in this interview, also admitting that she doesn’t want the Democrats to win.
And that is allowed.
We are allowed to want support for genocide to have political consequences for the ones doing it. And we don’t have to be shamed into doing otherwise.
In his interview, Jeremy Scahill reminds us that vote shaming is a real thing. It is also illogical, unfair, manipulative, and simply undemocratic to try to scare people into voting for someone they don’t align with, blaming them for the policies of the other candidate. “Kamala Harris has had an entire year of this genocidal war to listen to what people are saying,” Jeremy says.
Kamala has made her choice: who to listen to. Who to support. Who to stand with. Who to represent and who not to represent.
As Noura Erakat says, another term for the Democrats would mean whitewashing the crimes of the empire. Normalising what has been done in the past years. Giving it legitimacy and seemingly “going back to normal”.
But the “normal” is a crisis we have never seen before.
We are already in crisis.
We are already in crisis.
We are already in crisis, remember?
I was talking to a Palestinian acquaintance of mine earlier this year and he said something that stuck with me.
“At least under Trump, we weren’t alone — in our protests.”
People were organising.
People were protesting.
People understood they were in crisis.
I will leave you with my short rant on something I’ve seen recently. It wasn’t good for my nervous system and it might not be great for yours.
But it is an illustration of yet another point Noura Erakat made in her interview: that things reveal themselves to us in a struggle.
How much of white feminism there truly is – in intellectuals, researchers, and people who present themselves as progressives – around us. How honestly sickening it is, and how much our efforts to organise are needed ✊🏽
Read the article I quote by Chris Hedges here.
Watch an interview with Jill Stine, the Green Party presidential candidate, here.
And as always: stay strong, check on others, and keep your heart open.
❤️💔❤️
Justina
Find all my work on Palestine here.
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