Thursday, January 05, 2012

As things stand, there is no "occupy the voting booth" in the lexicon of Occupy dissenters

The blogger at Occupy Online's tumblr page maintains that the people who want us to participate in the rigged voting process are the very people that Occupy Wall Street is protesting:

I don’t want to vote…

and that doesn’t mean I should shut up. It means I refuse to participate in a rigged game. That means that I refuse to fall for the illusion of choice and stay silent and hopeful that some fallible, corruptible human will step into a position of power and remain faithful to his promises. I refuse to muddle my brain with campaign rhetoric and disappointing lies.

I know I am not alone. Try as they might to shame us into voting in their rigged game to feel like we are accomplishing anything, Obama proved to me once and for all that anyone who gets into power under our current regime is a puppet. Otherwise…why would they have ever been allowed to be in power?


Elections create the illusion of free choice. You and I are not the ones who select a president because the choices we have between 2 parties amount to the political equivalent of selecting paper or plastic (to paraphrase George Carlin). What I find remarkable about the Occupy movement is that it is focused on self-determination and reclaiming the democratic process. It is independent in the strongest sense of the word.

That reclamation project is why these folks hold their own General Assemblies, why they interrupt scripted government events with "mic checks," and why they take electoral politics with a grain of salt.

No comments:

Post a Comment