/r/50501 Mirror

Nothing wrong with voting, or running for low-level offices especially if you can take the right-wing pressure off your local library or school board. But we've seen with Bernie in 2016, with attempts to primary The Squad and other even slightly center-left Democrats in Congress (and if AOC runs for president, we'll see it again), that the Democratic party organizations, national and local, will largely come together against any leftist candidate. They have been tacking right for several elections now, for decades since Reagan, and I think it's about time we learn the lesson that electoral pressure isn't effective on them at this point. They know that we have no choice but to vote for them because the Republican party is so monstrous, so why on earth would they suddenly let a bunch of leftists spoil that?

Tenant unions work. They will get your plumbing fixed, your heating fixed, and can even (eventually) make your landlord sell the building to a tenant co-op. What if multiple tenant unions organize together? You can really make things happen. The real estate lobby is a huge part of what is screwing us over, so why not fight back directly instead of trying to elect someone who somehow has the superhuman ideological purity to be immune to the RE lobby's propaganda?

Direct action gets the goods. The civil rights movement wasn't just marching, speeches, and voting -- it was disruptive! It had boycotts, sit-ins, and the Black Panthers. The 5-day, 40-hour work week (and the entire New Deal) wasn't won by "getting our candidates in office", it was won by strikes and labor actions, supported by towns and municipalities' worth of people. Our indigenous water protectors, forest defenders, and other formations have stopped pipelines from being built and actually prevented ecological destruction.

It's electoralism that takes too long.