Preparing to Vote
by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Dear companions.
The Shalom Center has begun a Get Out The Vote (GOTV) effort for the next two months aiming towards the Presidential and Congressional elections in November.
First, I want to say something about the whole political meaning of having elections with real collisions and real disagreements.
We rarely think about voting as a non-violent action to change the world. Voting is in some ways parallel to a sit-in, a vigil, a teach-in, or other non-violent ways of changing the policies of those in power.
Indeed, I see elections as non-violent replacements for civil war. In this aspect, elections are based on the rough and often imperfect estimate that the power of the people would, if mobilized for elections, produce about the same victories, defeats, and stalled efforts that the same people, at the same moment, would have achieved by war.
Like all these other instruments of change, it may involve a choice between people or programs that are only partly changeful. For instance, in the great burst of energy that we often call “the Civil Rights Movement,” there were sit-ins to racially integrate local drugstores and restaurants; there were Freedom Rides to racially integrate interstate bus trips; there were efforts to physically appear at government offices to register to vote; there were attempts to create whole new political parties based exactly on people who were not permitted to vote.
In our lives 50 years ago and more, we had to choose which of these to give our time, our energy, our freedom, our lives.
We knew that integrating a drugstore would move some people, but it would certainly not achieve a new America.
We certainly affirmed that for some people, it was important to take the drugstore step in order to become comfortable about taking the voter-registration step.
For people who have been prevented from voting or for people who have for years felt that voting has made no difference in their lives, deciding to vote — registering to vote and actually voting — may be a big step in self-empowerment, even if it does not immediately bring social transformation.
This year, a loose network of people around the country have asserted that it sees too little difference between the Biden program and the Harris program about Gaza (to use a single word for a multilevel conflict).
So they propose to cast a protest vote by not voting for President unless there is a real ceasefire. We are not sure whether we see enough seeds of change in any of the campaigns to grow into transformative sprouts. We do see an enormous gap between those ideas and the rhetoric from one campaign that condemns anything less than total commitment to the Netanyahu program as Jewish heresy and Jewish treason.
By law, we are not, as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, permitted to support one or another candidate or party. But we are permitted to notice the differences in policy and in rhetoric that will influence future policy.
A GOTV campaign says nothing about what we are urging people to vote for — a major party, a minor party, a write-in. In 1968, confronted with the US war against Vietnam and two major party candidates that supported that war and its war crimes, I was a resident of the District of Columbia. I knew that DC would vote Democratic no matter what I did. I voted for Martin Luther King for President and Robert Kennedy for Vice President though both of them were dead.
I knew I was able to cast that vote without damaging anything I believed in. Had I been living in a swing state, I would have swallowed three or four times and voted for the “lesser evil.” But I am glad I used the freedom I was offered.
So voting is a non-violent act that may or may not be a step toward a transformed America. We will make GOTV connections for people anywhere in the United States who want to make calls or send postcards to urge Pennsylvanians (the biggest swing state) to vote. And we will respond respectfully to anyone who explains that for them, not voting is the best choice.
Blessings of shalom,
Arthur
