It is of course people’s personal choice how to use the power of their vote. In my case, yes, I will be voting for Jill Stein, because I cannot vote for genocide and in fact must vote against it. Would we question whether to vote for Hitler? Unfortunately, that’s the only example I can use, because all the other mass murdering, genocidal leaders are not remembered by most people as the horrific murderers they were. For they were “only” guilty of killing brown or black people or other asians and indigenous peoples who don’t seem to count.
Today we stand over a year into a genocide that has been playing out in our faces through the brave voices of journalists and every day people of Palestine, giving us a view of their deepest agony. The perpetrators are so comfortable that they also post their crimes on social media. Meanwhile, the US continues to send endless weapons to keep the conflict going and works in earnest to cripple dissent in human rights groups, international courts, the UN and countries who dare to call this genocide out. The US government leans on lawyers, diplomats, heads of state, and institutional leaders who demand accountability and an end to this horror.
The Democrats and Republicans promise to continue this, and have been pushing legislation to bleed the country of its finances and civil liberties to speak out. Arms manufacturers will keep this conflict and many others going, at the expense of human rights, and the horrors of the climate crisis.
So, in my eyes, to vote for this is to give further acceptance and support for something that I cannot. Any vote against this is a stand taken to demand the change that was silenced at our Universities by violence and at the political party conventions by exclusion. This will get worse and it already is, but in supporting it, we say that it must continue and four years from now we will have another two terrible candidates and an existential crisis to vote the less ugly genocider. How many more will be destroyed under the rubble because we refused to vote against this today?
It is on us to take action or as far too many do, look away and deny it. Politicians, media and institutions are doubling down on their verbal, legal, financial, arms and policing support of the genocidal nation of Israel. To speak out is to be a pariah, to lose opportunities, or perhaps, to face one’s conscience and find our way back to humanity.