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Title: Voting vs. Direct Action Author: CrimethInc. Date: January 1, 2004 Language: en Topics: voting, direct action Source: Retrieved on 7th November 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2004/01/01/voting-vs-direct-action
People in the U.S. are preoccupied with voting to an unhealthy degree.
This is not to say that everyone votes, or thinks voting is effective or
worthwhile; on the contrary, a smaller and smaller proportion of the
eligible population votes every election year, and that’s not just
because more and more people are in prison. But when you broach the
question of politics, of having a say in the way things are, voting is
just about the only strategy anyone can think of—voting, and influencing
others’ votes.
Could it be this is why so many people feel so disempowered? Is
anonymously checking a box once a year, or every four years, enough to
feel included in the political process, let alone play a role in it? But
what is there besides voting?
In fact, voting for people to represent your interests is the least
efficient and effective means of applying political power. The
alternative, broadly speaking, is acting directly to represent your
interests yourself.
This is known in some circles as “direct action.” Direct action is
occasionally misunderstood to mean another kind of campaigning, lobbying
for influence on elected officials by means of political activist
tactics; but it properly refers to any action or strategy that cuts out
the middle man and solves problems directly, without appealing to
elected representatives, corporate interests, or other powers.
Concrete examples of direct action are everywhere. When people start
their own organization to share food with hungry folks, instead of just
voting for a candidate who promises to solve “the homeless problem” with
tax dollars and bureaucracy, that’s direct action. When a man makes and
gives out fliers addressing an issue that concerns him, rather than
counting on the newspapers to cover it or print his letters to the
editor, that’s direct action. When a woman forms a book club with her
friends instead of paying to take classes at a school, or does what it
takes to shut down an unwanted corporate superstore in her neighborhood
rather than deferring to the authority of city planners, that’s direct
action, too. Direct action is the foundation of the old-fashioned can-do
American ethic, hands-on and no-nonsense. Without it, hardly anything
would get done.
In a lot of ways, direct action is a more effective means for people to
have a say in society than voting is. For one thing, voting is a
lottery—if a candidate doesn’t get elected, then all the energy his
constituency put into supporting him is wasted, as the power they were
hoping he would exercise for them goes to someone else. With direct
action, you can be sure that your work will offer some kind of results;
and the resources you develop in the process, whether those be
experience, contacts and recognition in your community, or
organizational infrastructure, cannot be taken away from you.
Voting consolidates the power of a whole society in the hands of a few
politicians; through force of sheer habit, not to speak of other methods
of enforcement, everyone else is kept in a position of dependence.
Through direct action, you become familiar with your own resources and
capabilities and initiative, discovering what these are and how much you
can accomplish.
Voting forces everyone in a movement to try to agree on one platform;
coalitions fight over what compromises to make, each faction insists
that they know the best way and the others are messing everything up by
not going along with their program. A lot of energy gets wasted in these
disputes and recriminations. In direct action, on the other hand, no
vast consensus is necessary: different groups can apply different
approaches according to what they believe in and feel comfortable doing,
which can still interact to form a mutually beneficial whole. People
involved in different direct actions have no need to squabble, unless
they really are seeking conflicting goals (or years of voting have
taught them to fight with anyone who doesn’t think exactly as they do).
Conflicts over voting often distract from the real issues at hand, as
people get caught up in the drama of one party against another, one
candidate against another, one agenda against another. With direct
action, on the other hand, the issues themselves are raised, addressed
specifically, and often resolved.
Voting is only possible when election time comes around. Direct action
can be applied whenever one sees fit. Voting is only useful for
addressing whatever topics are current in the political agendas of
candidates, while direct action can be applied in every aspect of your
life, in every part of the world you live in.
Voting is glorified as “freedom” in action. It’s not freedom— freedom is
getting to decide what the choices are in the first place, not picking
between Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Direct action is the real thing. You make
the plan, you create the options, the sky’s the limit.
Ultimately, there’s no reason the strategies of voting and direct action
can’t both be applied together. One does not cancel the other out. The
problem is that so many people think of voting as their primary way of
exerting political and social power that a disproportionate amount of
everyone’s time and energy is spent deliberating and debating about it
while other opportunities to make change go to waste. For months and
months preceding every election, everyone argues about the voting issue,
what candidates to vote for or whether to vote at all, when voting
itself takes less than an hour. Vote or don’t, but get on with it!
Remember how many other ways you can make your voice heard.
This being an election year, we hear constantly about the options
available to us as voters, and almost nothing about our other
opportunities to play a decisive role in our society. What we need is a
campaign to emphasize the possibilities more direct means of action and
community involvement have to offer. These need not be seen as in
contradiction with voting. We can spend an hour voting once a year, and
the other three hundred sixty four days and twenty three hours acting
directly!
Those who are totally disenchanted with representative democracy, who
dream of a world without presidents and politicians, can rest assured
that if we all learn how to apply deliberately the power that each of us
has, the question of which politician is elected to office will become a
moot point. They only have that power because we delegate it to them! A
campaign for direct action puts power back where it belongs, in the
hands of the people from whom it originates.