Voting for Whom?

Massive Rally to Register Voters for What?

By Jim Vail

The Chicago Teachers Union has correctly pointed out that the time is now to get politically active when teachers and workers are getting hit hard.

The CTU has been working on a voter registration drive.

But the question to ask is this - who essentially benefits from this work?  Workers, or the democratic party which is beholden to the 1%?

For example, if all this CTU work results in registering thousands of more voters, and yet no real alternatives are found to challenge the neoliberal mayor, or his surrounding puppets in the city council (there are a few exceptions, but what has changed?), then all that union work essentially went into upholding a horrific system destroying the 99%!

In other words, voting for so-called democratic alternatives is no way to ensure the people are properly represented.

Unless the people get involved, and understand how hard the fight is to get proper representation, then chasing voter registration pipe dreams may only further our demise ...

 

or not!

To champion an elected school board is noble indeed!  To fight the privatization of public education is noble as well.  

But which politicians out there are really challenging this?

In terms of voting, our friends at the Empowerment Committee in Albany Park did a wonderful analysis of our political system and voting.

Here are their findings:

REGISTRATION & VOTING

1) Voting in the old way for candidates is a dead end and promotes dangerous illusions.

2) The campaign for the right to vote during the Civil Rights era was about equal rights in the context of fighting for many rights--such as the right to use public facilities, to ride on the front of the bus, etc. It wasn’t about the value of voting, per se. Does the vote mean the same thing today? Were possibilities created in the South at that time to win elections against racists? I think the record shows that that happened.

3) Today, the right of the working class to vote is not a real power for African Americans or European-Americans. It’s basically a sham right. Today, the situation, especially in the North, is different from what it was during the Civil Rights era. 

But there is confusion among African-Americans and others about the supposed necessity to use that right regardless of who is running and how the system is rigged-- because of the history of fighting and dying to get that right. Note how ceaselessly the corporate media and corporate politicians urge people to vote when there are only anti-people candidates running--using every justification they can. That ought to make us think. And note that they don’t have such campaigns when there is a real choice--though that’s a rare situation. They do go all out to register the people they know will vote for their candidates.

I meet many African-Americans during and after election periods who say that their vote will not make any difference because the rich decide what’s going to go down. This is a high level of consciousness and is related to being streetwise--ie paying attention to experience and not just to words and promises. But many also say they feel torn because they know what it took to get the right to vote. I think we have a responsibility to discuss this contradiction, especially since a very large percentage of African-Americans are not voting--and for good reasons.

4) I think that registering people to vote in the present situation, is the same as urging people to vote, even when the case is choosing between “the lesser of two evils,” as is most often the case. 

In the situation of the schools crisis, we see honest people who are involved in fighting to save public education who put forward the retrograde idea--“anyone but Emanuel.” This is a serious mistake that contributes to more confusion, because Emanuel is not the source of the destruction of public education. He is just a particularly arrogant and vicious agent of the ruling class, but they can easily find someone slicker and more appealing --like Obama--under the banner of anyone but a white man. I can easily see the scenario of honest but confused people putting forward a Democratic candidate who has said some positive things, but will nevertheless continue the process of destroying public education. In other words, “Let’s hope for the best because he may be our savior.”

5) This doesn’t mean that it is never good to have a registration campaign, but it does mean that for any progressive people, that has to be tied to an election where the people have a real possibility of winning--at least by changing consciousness and public opinion. For example, in the case of a mayoral election, if the people put forward a candidate who publicly pledges to carry out the people’s specific agenda and to constantly go back to the people to find out what they want him to do, then people should fight to get him elected, including fighting to register voters. The very process and content of such a campaign will empower the people to take action on “We decide!” and not on finding someone who will decide for us as he decides what’s good for us.

In smaller arenas the conditions are sometimes good for running people’s candidates (as defined above) and having a pretty good chance to win. For example, if the Mayor was somehow forced to allow people to have a referendum vote when Ald. Dick Mell retired, we would have had a good opening to run and win-- with Deb Mell also running, since many people see her as part of a dynasty. 

A registration campaign could be helpful in this situation. Real public debate is a good thing for the people and bad for the ruling class.

To sum up, at a time when the people do not hold power, how and when or whether to participate in an election is basically a tactical matter. The principle--something that is not up for grabs, and not a tactical matter-- is not to willingly confuse people about the limits of such elections when the finance capitalists hold both wealth, and control of the police and army.