Confidant6198

Hold the line and don’t vote for g*nocide. That’s what Sabrina Salvati recently argued on the ‘Bad Faith’ podcast.

The podcaster (@SabbySabs2) and member of Revolutionary Blackout Network (@revblacknetwork) argued that if left-leaning voters had organised to build an independent party rather than backing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, perhaps that could have changed the duopoly that defines U.S. politics today, where presidential elections are a contest on who is the ‘lesser of two evils’ candidate. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris asks voters who question her record over Palestine if they want Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in office. At the same time, Trump tries to scare voters by inaccurately describing Harris as a Marxist.

Fearmongering on both sides is what the US ruling class is forcing people to choose between in the 2024 presidential election coming up in November. Meanwhile, progressive and socialist candidates offering real solutions to people’s everyday problems while advocating to end aggressive U.S. imperialist policies abroad and its support for pariah states like Israel barely get mainstream media coverage and are barred from televised debates.

What do you think? Is there hope in the US breaking away from the duopoly of Republicans vs Democrats? Can there really be a third-party option that can alter the direction of US imperialism without the billions of dollars that both Democrats and Republicans raise through their connections to Wall Street and domestic and foreign lobby groups? According to OpenSecrets’ in 2020, Trump’s campaign raised $774 million, while Biden’s campaign became the first to raise over $1 billion from donors. Can third parties compete when Democratic and Republican candidates spend that money?

Video credit: @badfaithpod (X) @briebriejoy (X)

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The Democratic Party has been trying to appeal to Black communities in the US by referencing hip-hop songs, doing interviews on Black media platforms, and, according to some reports, even changing their accent when speaking to Black people. 

In recent years, Republicans have also been trying to appeal to Black voters by claiming immigrants steal jobs, with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump going as far as calling the low-paid positions allegedly under threat as ‘Black jobs.’ 

Despite these political parties’ attempts to garner votes, a narrative remains that voting rates are low in working-class Black communities because Black people are ignorant, uneducated or too lazy to cast a ballot. A Washington Post-Ipsos survey reported that 62 per cent of Black people planned to vote in November’s presidential election, down from 74 per cent in June 2020. What might account for the drop?

However, Dedan Wa Waciuri of North Carolina-based community organisation Mapinduzi (@mapinduzi_252 on IG and @weareuziiii on X) argued that neither Republicans nor Democrats work in Black people’s interests. He pointed out that voting activists are the truly lazy ones for limiting their political engagement in our communities to once every four years. 

What might be the solution? Perhaps, we can studying the Black Power Movement in the US and the worldwide Pan-African struggle. Then, consider organising for Black liberation and Pan-Africanism, like Mapinduzi.

In the comments, let us know what you think of Waciuri’s message.

Video credit: @bigklfa600 (TikTok) @dedanwaciuri (IG) @waciuri_dedan (X)

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https://responsiblestatecraft.org/china-cold-war-2669160202/

Nice to see your hard earned tax dollars are going towards such a fabulous cause. Meanwhile I've heard it said that Chinese and Russian bots exploit divisions in the Western world by talking about things like poverty, homelessness, gun violence, racism and sexism. Well maybe you should start doing something about those issues to stop them being used as fuel for alleged foreign propaganda efforts hmmm?