Voting for more tools in my toolbox

We’re in a political season where we’re once again being asked to choose between Trump and a fresher-faced Democratic presidential administration. All around me I hear rhetoric that reminds us of how people think about voting and their role in the electoral process. On one side I hear people talk about voting for “the lesser of two evils” which is often countered by “not voting for evil at all.” On the other side I’ve got folks who are very, very excited for Kamala Harris many in the vein of identity groups like “Christians for Harris” and “Evangelicals for Harris.”

I’m in a different place.

I’m preaching about hope in times of political disaster this fall, gearing up for what will likely be an intense and terrifying season in the US, either by the election of a white supremacist tyrant or his reaction to losing. I chose Isaiah as the book I’ll preach from because it captures so much of the anxiety and political instability people around me are feeling.

But it is also a text that provides an orientation towards the state:

Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
   and are accounted as dust on the scales;
   see, he takes up the isles like fine dust. (Isa 40:15)

The writer of Isaiah has little regard for the power of the nations in the scope of salvation history. “All the nations are as nothing before him; they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.” I’d bet that for Isaiah, calling nations evil is giving them too much credit. This is remarkable because this part of Isaiah is directed against Babylon, the regional superpower that pillaged and destroyed Jerusalem before sending Israel into exile.

The traditional Anabaptist application of this text is non-resistance towards governance. You don’t participate in elections because these are powers that have nothing to do with you and nothing to do with God. But I think there’s another possibility. We orient ourselves towards state power in the same we orient ourselves toward any other significant and provisional part of our lives. When I vote, I think about who offers me more leverage to shift the powers, however provisional, towards the world I want to see come into being.

That decision takes place with a particular set of cultural and historic factors. I live in a country with a government somewhat in proximity to democracy, and that affords me a particular set of tools for accountability and social change. I am afforded a certain set of rights, like right to assembly and free press. I appreciate the broadest interpretation of these rights because they give me more to work with. I am leery of candidates who want to strip those rights down either by exercising a broad presidential immunity or by installing Justices who undermine those rights. One party has a better track record than the other.

I have also lived through the nightmare of a Trump presidency and I’d prefer not to do it again.

In the second year of Trump’s presidency, I sat in the conference room of a local nonprofit learning how to document ICE stops in our community. I’d answered the call to be a part of a network of responders who drive to a location where someone reported an ICE stop. We were trained in how to record the incident while shouting resource information to the person being detained.

I can still feel the terror and despair rushing through me when I think about those days. I remember the Muslim ban and the airport actions, the people who stopped planes from taking off with migrants, the people who stood around an ICE vehicle to stop their friend from being dragged to deportation. Many of these people were arrested, jailed, and charged with federal crimes. All the people they risked for were eventually deported or refused entry. Some of these returned to their home countries and were killed by the people and forced they tried to escape.

I remember the people who spent years living in churches to stave off arrest and deportation. I remember the churches in North Carolina who spent years sheltering people as sanctuary churches, how they provided food and laundry and work and a stipend and community and how they built showers and bedrooms into their churches. I remember the people who spent years sleeping in the same building so those living in shelter were not alone at night.

I remember the vast expansion of child separation at the border under the Trump administration, the flagrant violation of the 72-hour holding rule, how, at one point, half a million traumatized children were alone in cages at the border. I remember feeling a kind of desperation overtake me, like I needed to get bolt cutters and get in my car and start driving. I wondered about what kind of person I was that I didn’t start driving the moment I saw those pictures cross my screen. I am still haunted.

The Biden administration didn’t offer the swift overhaul of the immigration system that I longed for. Biden followed in the footsteps of Obama, The Deporter in Chief, and shifted from blocking border access to vastly increasing deportations. Biden’s administration continued family separation, though not at the level of the Trump years. But other things are also true. People came out of sanctuary churches, some won their cases. Biden brought refugee resettlement up to 125,000, far less than needed, but substantially better than Trump’s historic low of 15,000. I was very glad when the Biden administration reached a settlement with the ACLU over child separation lawsuits.

I am certain that the changes we saw are the result of persistent organizing from Latine-led organizations, coalitions, and nonprofits who put immigration and refugee concerns in front of us day after day. The outrage and anger that followed, the collective work of people who refused to let this normalize held the Biden administration accountable. I am grateful for the ongoing work from these organizations and activists who wouldn’t let “at least it’s not Trump” dilute the issues facing migrant people.

In the past decade, both major US political parties have shifted their politics in response to activists. For the right, that has meant draconian, racist, anti-gay, misogynistic laws at every level of governance. On the left, Biden was also pushed away from the center (thank you, God, for Bernie Sanders). Climate agenda? Left organizing. Broad consensus around a ceasefire? Left organizing. Chuck Schumer going all in on cannabis legalization? Left organizing. Student debt cancellation? Left organizing. Infrastructure bill? Left organizing.

I like tools. And I have not yet been convinced by those who see the future of the US built in the ashes of accelerationist politics and democratic sabotage. You’re welcome to convince me by activating structures of care and communities of accountability that can hold people in safety during the decimation of the current substandard offering we have. But I’m not there yet.

At the heart of Christian belief is that the superpowers who rule over us are passing away like vapor. Until then, I’ll vote in the direction of having the most tools in my toolbox to live in these terrible times. I want politicians in place who I think can be moved. I want strikes, protests, organizing, lobbying, resistance. I want to pressure our government towards the politics I want.

I don’t have spare hope to put in our electoral politics. But I do have hope for people organizing, for people in the streets.