An Open Letter to Anti-War Activists

Posted on March 07, 2006

Why it's time to abandon "lesser evil" politics and join the Aaron Dixon campaign for U.S. Senate

Progressives Will Not Be Taken for Granted

By Aram Falsafi

You have marched in the rain and the cold. You have given money. You have listened to endless speeches. You have stood in line to vote for candidates who were supposed to be on your side - and others that you knew were not on your side but were less objectionable than the alternative.

And you have called your elected officials. You expected to be ignored by Bush and his cronies. After all, you are not their base and you have not helped elect them. But when you are abandoned - or worse, taken for granted - by the people whom you helped put into office, that is the worst form of betrayal.

Maria Cantwell is a case in point. After the progressive community provided her razor-thin margin of victory in 2000 (several times over), she went on to reward us by voting for practically every war resolution, every attack on our civil liberties, every "free trade" agreement, every tax cut for the rich, and many other pieces of legislation that we have opposed.

Dress Rehearsal for 2008

And now we have Hillary Clinton getting ready to officially launch her 2008 presidential campaign. She is trying to establish her "tough of terrorism" credentials by out-hawking the chicken-hawks. Once again, she is assuming that antiwar activists have nowhere else to go, and that the party base is so desperate for a win that they will pick another "I can kill Iraqis too" candidate like they did in 2004, in order to win the proverbial battleground states – the party's progressive base be damned. Are you ready for another election where you are forced to choose between two pro-war candidates?

Time to Reconsider Lesser-evil Voting

One problem, exacerbated since 2004, has been that the Democratic Party leadership believes that they can take the progressive vote for granted. They are convinced that you will vote for their candidates, no matter how undesirable, as long as there is a Republican in the race. That, more than anything else, guarantees your disenfranchisement. After all, why should they listen to you, if you truly have nowhere else to go?

We in the Green party believe that the Democratic Party, as an institution, is part of the problem. Even if they put up a half-decent candidate once in a while, it is usually for a local race in a progressive community or a long-shot primary challenger whose primary goal is to keep progressives from abandoning the party. We consider both corporate parties to be tools of the same moneyed interests. Which is why we are working to build an alternative to the so-called two party system.

But we also understand that a lot of progressives are not ready to give up completely on the Democratic Party. Therefore, even if you are still hoping to influence the Democratic Party, we urge you to ask yourself one question: Will it help your cause to support a Democratic candidate who has betrayed you at every opportunity? What message does that send to the party establishment?

What about the strategy, proposed by some, of protesting loudly, supporting progressive challengers in primary races, but then checking out the poll numbers and falling in line if the general election race proves to be a close one? In that case, won't you be telling the Democratic Party machine that they can take your vote for granted - just as long as they actually need it? Hasn't recent history shown that this too is a recipe for disenfranchisement?

So even if your ultimate goal is to convert the Democratic Party into a genuine alternative to the current ruling cabal, we urge you to stick to your principles, and refuse to support a candidate with as horrible a track record as Maria Cantwell, whatever the polls show on election day. A large-scale abandonment of Cantwell, not to mention the other seven pro-war Democratic senators up for reelection this year, will send a clear message for 2008: that the antiwar movement will no longer be taken for granted. But this threat must be carried out to its conclusion: on election day, not matter what the polls predict.

A Great Candidate, a Strong Campaign

This year, the Green Party is running Aaron Dixon for US Senate, on a platform of opposition to the war in Iraq. This campaign will not only point out the immoral and illegal nature of this war, but will also highlight its domestic cost, in New Orleans, Yakima, and Seattle. Aaron is especially qualified to speak to these issues, having spent the past 35 years fighting for everything that we stand for - from his leadership of the Black Student Union at the University of Washington to his recent work with homeless children in Seattle.

We will run the strongest campaign that we can. We hope to show the antiwar movement and others who have been taken for granted for so long that they do have other options. We hope that you will join us. And if that costs Ms. Cantwell her senate seat, she will only have her own abysmal voting record to blame.

On the other hand, if you choose to vote for Cantwell - whatever your reason - you can be sure that the Democratic Party machine will read that as a validation of their calculations.

The More Things Change ...

Finally, in order to reinforce the need for a complete break with the lesser evil politics of the Democratic Party, I would like to share with you excerpts from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Hunter S. Thompson's book about the George McGovern campaign in 1972.

"I nodded. The argument was familiar. I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but 'regrettably necessary' holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

I have been through three presidential elections, now, but it has been twelve years since I could look at a ballot and see a name I wanted to vote for ... I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing, this year is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I can recall, twelve years ago in 1960 - and as far as I can tell, we've gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same."

That was in 1972, when there was more of a difference between Democrats and Republicans. Another thirty four years of voting for the lesser evil has only given us candidates that are less and less different than their opponents, even as their opponents move further to the right.

Is this what we are doomed to repeating for the next thirty four years?

Aram Falsafi is volunteer coordinator for the Green Party of Seattle and active in the Aaron Dixon for Senate campaign.

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An Open Letter to Anti-War Activists