Voting is Not Harm Reduction An Indigenous Perspective February 2020 – www.indigenousaction.org
Zine format printable PDF download: Voting is Not Harm Reduction Zine-FINAL-PRINT (9.8MB)
"When proclamations are made that “voting is harm reduction,” it’s never clear how less harm is actually calculated. Do we compare how many millions of undocumented Indigenous Peoples have been deported? Do we add up what political party conducted more drone strikes? Or who had the highest military budget? Do we factor in pipelines, mines, dams, sacred sites desecration? Do we balance incarceration rates? Do we compare sexual violence statistics? Is it in the massive budgets of politicians who spend hundreds of millions of dollars competing for votes?
Though there are some political distinctions between the two prominent parties in the so-called U.S., they all pledge their allegiance to the same flag. Red or blue, they’re both still stripes on a rag waving over stolen lands that comprise a country built by stolen lives.
We don’t dismiss the reality that, on the scale of U.S. settler colonial violence, even the slightest degree of harm can mean life or death for those most vulnerable. What we assert here is that the entire notion of “voting as harm reduction” obscures and perpetuates settler-colonial violence, there is nothing “less harmful” about it, and there are more effective ways to intervene in its violences."
There is nothing intersectional about participating in and maintaining a genocidal political system. There’s no meaningful solidarity to be found in a politics that urges us to meet our oppressors where they’re at. Voting as harm reduction imposes a false solidarity upon those identified to be most vulnerable to harmful political policies and actions.
Perhaps some liberals feel when they vote they participate in a solidarity with the poor and oppressed, but this would be deluded thinking. I don’t see why this negates the value of voting for other reasons, however.
The logic of voting as harm reduction asserts that whoever is facing the most harm will gain the most protection by the least dangerous denominator in a violently authoritarian system.
Is it true that some groups are endangered by one party such that voting for the other might be protective? I cannot tell if the author denies this is true, or that it doesn’t do enough to protect and thus should be discarded as “too little, too late”. The question is fundamentally whether voting has any benefit or political relevance at all, or whether the benefit and relevance is simply considered too little compared to the moral risk of participating.
This settler-colonial naivety places more people, non-human beings, and land at risk then otherwise. Most typically the same liberal activists that claim voting is harm reduction are found denouncing and attempting to suppress militant direct actions and sabotage as acts that “only harm our movement.” “Voting as harm reduction” is the pacifying language of those who police movements.
I don’t see how voting, and particularly voting as a “harm reduction” strategy, poses greater risk than refusing to vote. Liberals suppressing direct actions and sabotage is not the same thing as voting as harm reduction, even if some of those liberals will argue for voting instead, that is not the only way to approach voting, i.e. they are clearly not mutually exclusive (you can engage in militant direct action, and vote). If anything, policing militants to not vote is some of the same policing of strategies that the liberals do, just in the other direction. I still don’t see a pragmatic justification for refusing to vote, even if I see pragmatic justifications for refusing the calls to not engage in direct action or sabotage (even if sometimes activists blunder in their actions and fail to reach their political goals because they did not assess the situation properly, it is clear that militant direct action can be useful and even necessary in achieving certain political ends, see: the Magna Carta, the liberal revolutions, the Haymarket Affair, etc.).
Direct action, or the unmediated expression of individual or collective desire, has always been the most effective means by which we change the conditions of our communities.
Even if this is true (which I personally think it is), it does not demonstrate that voting isn’t also a form of political action that can have consequence (and for many, is less demanding of time, energy, and risk than direct action). I don’t see a pragmatic argument in this paper for refusing the strategy of voting, even if I see plenty of reasons here to do much more than vote (though as usual we are left with vague notions of “direct action” and not specific calls-to-action, which is fine but might be unsatisfying for some who might agree and want to take the next step).
What do we get out of voting that we cannot directly provide for ourselves and our people? What ways can we organize and make decisions that are in harmony with our diverse lifeways? What ways can the immense amount of material resources and energy focused on persuading people to vote be redirected into services and support that we actually need? What ways can we direct our energy, individually and collectively, into efforts that have immediate impact in our lives and the lives of those around us?
The resources put into getting out the vote are not resources that would necessarily otherwise be used for good. I would think the liberals and corporate PACs are primarily funding those get-out-the-vote campaigns, and that money isn’t going to go where we want if we Just Don’t Vote (if anything, I would think not voting would increase the amount of money being wasted on trying to get out the vote, as low voter turnout would on paper justify further increased funding).
Of course, the money could & should be put to better use, but the framing implies collectively refusing to vote will ensure this happens, and I don’t see anything that makes this seem like a likely outcome.
What strategies and actions can we devise to make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land?
Not too long ago socialists and anarchists collaborated in suffragist movements precisely to help increase the political power of oppressed groups like women, not just out of capitalist identity politics, but out of more radical political commitments. Voting, and getting groups like women the right to vote, are precisely some of the strategies that have been used to disrupt the patriarchal system. We should not throw out a political tool simply because it does not fill all purposes.
In our rejection of the abstraction of settler colonialism. we don’t aim to seize colonial state power but to abolish it.
We seek nothing but total liberation.
That is great, will liberation be achieved in the timeline of elections? Will it be possible to avoid the harm of refusing to vote, demotivating liberals from forming coalitions with the left by depending on leftist votes, and allowing those elections to be won by increasingly right-wing political actors? I am for total liberation, but until it is here there is a lot we care about, a lot worth defending.
What real risks of not voting if total liberation is not here soon? What pragmatic political outcome is gained by not voting? Do the benefits of not voting outweigh the risks?
I’ll start by saying that I don’t totally disagree with your points. I think a simple blanket statement like “don’t vote” is wholely harmful, and only serves to perpetuate apathy and further oppression.
That said, the message here is plainly more than calling for people to abstain from voting. Its a call for militant direct action, which electoralism serves to pacify.
I don’t think I can express it more eloquently than the author, and I don’t think that a particular excerpt can do justice to the point, but this part seems salient.
This doesn’t mean simply abstinence or ignoring the problem until it just goes away, it means developing and implementing strategies and maneuvers that empower Indigenous People’s autonomy.
One person devoting their time, energy, and organizational capacity to liberation can do more to help their community than any number of people voting for a lesser evil chosen by the oppressors.
The point is not to dissuade leftists from voting, it’s to persuade them to take action. In the case of Indigenous Action that isn’t a vague call to action either. There’s active resistance in need of material support on Turtle Island currently.
I am on-board with taking multiple strategies, any political strategy that categorically ignores electoralism or militant direct action are likely making some kind of strategic error. However, this zine does not take that position. Some more context around the quote you provided, first it is under a heading:
Rejecting settler colonial authority, aka not voting.
The surrounding context of the quote:
Voting will never be “harm reduction” while colonial occupation & U.S. imperialism reigns. In order to heal we have to stop the harm from occurring, not lessen it. This doesn’t mean simply abstinence or ignoring the problem until it just goes away, it means developing and implementing strategies and maneuvers that empower Indigenous People’s autonomy. Since we cannot expect those selected to rule in this system to make decisions that benefit our lands and peoples, we have to do it ourselves.
They are saying we shouldn’t ignore the problem that voting is supposed to reduce harm from, but directly address it with direct action. It is not saying we should still vote and participate in electoralism. Nowhere in this zine is it implied voting is any form of legitimate political action, and everywhere it implies it is 1. unhelpful and 2. wrong.
For example:
Consolidating the Native vote into a voting bloc that aligns with whatever settler party, politician, or law that appears to do less harm isn’t a strategy to exercise political power, it’s Stockholm syndrome.
To organize from a position that voting is an act of damage limitation blurs lines of the harm that settler and resource colonialism imposes. Under colonial occupation all power operates through violence. There is absolutely nothing “less harmful” about participating in and perpetuating the political power of occupying forces. Voting won’t undue [sic] settler colonialism, white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, or capitalism. Voting is not a strategy for decolonization.
Even if I agree that voting won’t undo colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism it is clear that voting can reduce the harm of this system by avoiding some electoral outcomes and prioritizing others. This zine would be in a much stronger position if it were willing to take a slightly more nuanced position that voting should merely not be the top priority or focus for political action, which seems exceedingly reasonable and well grounded, but instead it argues the absurd position that voting and participating in electoralism can show any benefit or lessen any harm.
I can understand frustration with liberals and the dominant prevailing political culture in the U.S. which makes voting seem like the only legitimate form of politics, and so perhaps they feel the need to exaggerate or take a more extreme position as a counter-weight, but it needlessly weakens the position and will only effectively work as rhetoric for insiders who largely already agree and who will simply entrench themselves in symbolic positions like this against good sense, which primarily fractures the left and makes coalition-forming more difficult. I’m not calling for blind, authoritarian left-unity but politics are too important to not be smart and strategic, and I don’t see arguing for not voting as the zine encourages helps on any front. The value and necessity of direct action can be demonstrated adequately without making a case that voting cannot reduce harm.
