Stop saying "vote blue no matter who"
Putting Democrats in power is not a cure-all solution to the pain erupting across America
You might have seen the phrase “vote blue no matter who” being tossed around on social media. It was an oft-repeated credo before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and the uprising against racism and police brutality, and has continued to be offered as a guiding political ethos. The idea is that you should vote for the Democrat in any election as a way to combat Trumpism and the bigoted GOP. Put Democrats in charge, and things will get better. Justice will be restored.
If only that were at all accurate.
George Floyd was murdered in a city with a Democratic mayor, in a state with a Democratic governor and a legislature that has a Democratic majority. Both Bill de Blasio of New York and Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, arguably the two most visible mayors in the country and both of whom harbor various levels of Presidential aspirations, are Democrats. The governors of New York and California, Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom, are both Democrats.
Cuomo in particular recently enjoyed an outpouring of liberal adoration for his seemingly assertive presence in the face of COVID-19, a contrast to President Trump bumbling about like an idiot. That was despite the fact that Cuomo cut Medicare funding in the midst of the pandemic, and that both his and de Blasio’s reluctance to act likely caused thousands of deaths.
Most recently, Cuomo and de Blasio have focused their energies on letting the NYPD run rampant through New York City as it lashes out in rage that the people dare to demand an end to the unchecked authority of the police to harass, brutalize and kill as they please.
Garcetti’s LAPD is also operating with basically no oversight beyond that provided by the cell phone cameras pointed at them, and even the knowledge that the world is watching has failed to prevent the LAPD (and cops from all over the country) from providing hundreds of examples of why drastic changes are needed.
de Blasio, who was elected mayor on a platform of police reform, has utterly failed to control his cops. He was in office when Eric Garner was murdered. The officer was fired five years later. de Blasio’s response to the ongoing uprising within his city has been to whine that the NYPD is doing a great job, that they’re being gentle. Cuomo has echoed the sentiment and criticized a reporter for asking about excessive use of force. Let’s roll the tape.
These defenses of the NYPD come after night after night of brutality from the cops, and also after they tweeted out de Blasio’s daughter’s personal information following her arrest at a protest. The offending tweet had to be taken down by Twitter, and the mayor offered a half-hearted condemnation of the Sergeants Benevolent Association for putting his family at risk. The SBA did this not after de Blasio had done something to disservice them, but after he and Cuomo had doubled the number of cops on the streets of New York in an effort to curtail the protests.
This isn’t just about New York, of course. This is about the whole country. There are too many instances of cities led by Democrat mayors experiencing overwhelming police violence to list (here’s an enormous collection of videos of the police terrorizing people across the country). I do want to share this video from Philadelphia, however. It might be the most singularly disturbing piece of footage I’ve seen during the uprising.
It’s hard to watch, but it’s important to watch. These people have nowhere to go. They were pushed up onto that embankment after protesting on the highway. The cops are firing canister after canister of tear gas at them. It’s barbaric. It’s inhumane.
It’s America.
The problem exists outside of local politics too. Members of the Congress and Senate are elected year after year promising change and none has come. Barack Obama’s Presidency saw increased militarization of the police, even after the uprisings in Ferguson and Baltimore. Both of those uprisings were spurred by Black men being murdered by cops. Obama used the word “thugs” to refer to looters in Baltimore. He wasn’t talking about the cops who pushed drugs looted from pharmacies to their dealer contacts.
None of this is to say that Democrats are the real racists or anything absurd like that. The Republican Party is clearly the more bigoted and dangerous group. Tom Cotton’s op-ed in the New York Times yesterday, in which he advocates that the military be deployed to American cities to put down the protests with overwhelming force, is proof enough of that. I won’t be linking to that column here, as clicking on it justifies its existence to the Times brass.
What I’m saying is that simply voting for whomever has the “D” next to their name on your ballot is not nearly enough, not even close to enough of a solution to the problems of systemic racism and police brutality. These protests are about hundreds of years of racism perpetrated by heavily armed enforcers of the racist will of the state. Every time a Democrat rolls over and shows their belly for cops and police unions, they help maintain that status quo. Police unions scream bloody murder every time the word “reforms” is even so much as whispered by elected officials, which is why those initiatives are often so toothless and weak. The unions carry incredible financial muscle that they wield for campaign donations and endorsements. Any move that upsets them results in smearing in the press, and even actions that go as far as what the NYPD did to de Blasio and his daughter.
Even if reforms were put in place, they would not change the culture that permeates the police. The culture is one of control, of machismo and fuck-you. Some people become cops because they want power. They want to have the baton and the handcuffs and gun on their hip. Better training doesn’t fix that.
The solution is to defund them. The police can’t deploy clouds of tear gas and seas of heavily armored officers if the funding doesn’t exist to purchase that equipment. They won’t have military-grade humvees and weaponry if they aren’t given to them. The end goal would be an abolition of the police, which this Times op-ed lays out quite well. This concept is something that exists almost entirely outside of the current political establishment. Even Bernie Sanders’ proposals don’t go that far (his involve paying cops more).
Electoralism alone will not bring about necessary change. Well-meaning liberal thinkers clutch their pearls at the profanity and damage done by the thousands and thousands of angry people in the streets, saying that the methods betray the cause. Yet it was not until Minneapolis was thrown into chaos and the movement spread across the country and around the globe that Derek Chauvin was arrested and charged, that his fellow officers were also arrested, that institutions within the city began to sever their ties with the police department, and that Garcetti decided to cut up to $150 million out of the LAPD’s budget (a figure that represents less than ten percent of their whole financial muscle). Garcetti only did that after the streets of his city were filled with protestors and after having to cover for his Chief of Police, who said that the protestors were in part responsible for George Floyd’s death.
Direct action is the true spark of change. Elections are part of the solution, but that does not mean blindly voting just for members of the so-called opposition party. It means organizing communities and independent organizations. It means fostering leadership, and then supporting those leaders in primary elections so that they can be put into positions of power both outside of and inside the government.
I’ll leave you with this Twitter thread from Times reporter Ali Watkins. She goes into detail about what she saw in Brooklyn last night. It was peaceful until the cops decided it wouldn’t be. We as Americans have to decide if that’s how we want to live.