Voting Like a Radical and Honoring the Complexities of Organizing for Justice

_{NOTE: In the days leading up to the election, NDN Collective was invited to participate and contribute to a video with other organizers and activists, calling upon the movement to “Vote Like a Radical,” inspired by the essay authored by April Rosenblum.}

Many of you may have noticed that NDN Collective has not publicly weighed in on this year’s elections. This was intentional. It is not lost on us that this is a historically close election with grave consequences, and it also cannot go without saying that the current political landscape is more riddled with hypocrisy than ever as a genocide persists in Gaza, supported by both parties.

As a movement organization, we know that we operate best when we are principled, disciplined, and uphold our values to our Indigenous Peoples, both within Turtle Island and worldwide. We know that from the beginning, this government was set up to facilitate the genocide of our Peoples and the theft and control of our lands, territories, sacred waters, ecosystems and minerals, to the detriment of the sustainability of all sacred life. As such, we have never pretended to buy fully into this version of “Democracy.”

Instead, our participation in any level of government is driven by an effort to protect our movements, the land, all life, and our international Indigenous relatives from further exploitation and harm. In everything we do, we utilize multiple strategies to change these conditions and stay grounded in our core values. Voting is ONE tactic to protect our people and all our relations while keeping our movements moving forward.

As Indigenous Peoples, we are the living histories and testaments that settler colonial goals for extermination have never ended, and this government continues to negatively impact the well-being of our Peoples and the health and sustainability of Mother Earth. Therefore, we did not join the cries of liberals, Native or not, calling upon our People to vote in order to “Save Democracy,” and during an election where both Presidential candidates are complicit in carrying out genocide in Gaza– an assault on life that has only been possible due to US financial and military support, despite not having the support and consent from the majority of US citizens.

Our approach to this election has maintained a principled focus: to hold both major parties of this so-called democracy accountable for their blatant support for genocide…

The so-called threats to democracy, marked by “the rise” of white supremacy and facism, is narrative gaslighting that ignores that these values have served for the foundation of this country all along, and have been effectively woven in the very fabric of our government and economic institutions since the colonization of our homelands. This is why hard won rights (gender, racial, economic, educational) that took generations to achieve, have been so easily compromised and threatened by changes in administrations and the actions of a biased Supreme Court.

Because NDN Collective is an organization made up of organizers deeply rooted in our communities, we know the extent of the threats they face. As movement leaders we will never operate from a place of fear, or from a political analysis that measures progress by one’s proximity to power in an unjust and systemically corrupt governmental system willfully violating the rights of others. We know our liberation is intertwined and that we cannot be free unless all Peoples are free from violence, exploitation and political manipulation.

Our approach to this election has maintained a principled focus: to hold both major parties of this so-called democracy accountable for their blatant support for genocide, and for the conditions of increased surveillance and policing of social justice movements who dare take a stand against these gross violations of human rights and international law. We have done so because we know that our struggles for liberation across Turtle Island are directly linked to the liberation of all Peoples fighting the monsters of colonialism, imperialism, racism, greed and cultures of supremacy.

We know that our people have been struggling everyday, watching the horrors of genocide play across their phones, computers and TVs, witnessing the inhumane violence that we know lives in our blood/body memories and our collective experiences of historical trauma.

So we chose to walk with care this election year, focusing on what we need to do to keep our movements strong while working to fundraise and redistribute funds to those hardworking Indigenous-led Get Out The Vote (GOTV) organizations who have spent years building up the infrastructure and strategies to most effectively help our people overcome systemic barriers when it comes to getting out to vote.

Conditions for all life on Mother Earth have not gotten better regardless of who has been in charge. It’s gotten worse.

Meanwhile, we have refused to jump on the bandwagon of the tone-deaf and out of touch messaging aimed at Native Peoples and communities sickened by the actions of both parties and the blatant disregard for our Peoples’ biggest priorities. We have refused to buy into the false idea that a winning strategy is one in which we are telling people to vote for “the lesser evil,” knowing full well that our people are being silenced, or facing overt violence, for daring to ask for our most basic rights to be upheld.

As Indigenous Peoples, we value the depths of our collective and shared struggles because we know that it comes from the deepest considerations of who we are as Peoples, our responsibilities to all our relatives in the struggle, and our love and hope for building something better and much more representative of a true multi-racial democracy. For us, a multi-racial democracy must have as its very foundation LANDBACK, Black Reparations, Reproductive Justice, Racial and Gender Equality, and Economic Justice all tied into a commitment to investing in and creating regenerative economies. This is the primary pathway to effectively redress the generations of harm caused to Mother Earth and to our beautiful, precious and diverse Peoples.

This year, we have seen colonial borders continue to incarcerate our relatives, kill families, and prevent the migration of our non-human relations. We have seen the impacts of climate change destroy cities, decimate ecosystems, and decrease wildlife as much as 73%. We have seen our children shot, killed, beaten, arrested, and denied justice by these colonial governments. We have seen those that have advocated for stopping the most well documented genocide in the history of the world be arrested and criminalized. We have seen clean water become scarce.

Conditions for all life on Mother Earth have not gotten better regardless of who has been in charge. It’s gotten worse. The common denominator is the US and how it continues to function.

We truly hoped that the messaging and strategies around this critical election would improve. That those with the responsibility to uphold democratic processes would would wake up and recognize that ignoring genocide is a losing strategy and that not speaking truthfully about the complexities surrounding this election and the failures of both parties to uphold fundamental rights would alienate voters.

Instead, they have proven to be so out of touch with their base, that they resorted to celebrity endorsements, fear mongering, and silencing of dissent, showing us that they are incapable of practicing the very democratic principles they pretend to uphold. As a result, the Presidential race is so incredibly close because nothing significant distinguishes the two candidates. People understand that no matter who is in office, our rights and our collective futures are under threat.

We know that for many people, choosing not to vote or to vote third party is a legitimate organizing strategy. And we also know the depth of the moral and ethical dilemma faced by those in swing states, who are deeply struggling with voting for either of the two larger parties. We have seen President after President ignore the demands of movements and repeatedly failed to uphold some of our most important policy asks once in office. We have witnessed and endured overt hate, racism, and the most toxic elements of white supremacist, heteropatriarchal culture.

But we are here to propose another way.

VOTING LIKE A RADICAL

To us, voting like a Radical means honoring all these complexities. Remembering first and foremost that our liberation is tied up with everyone else and that it’s our responsibility to never forget that and to act with principled integrity.

It means acknowledging that politicians will never create or facilitate the change the world needs– the People will. We know that to facilitate this change, it is easier to mobilize with one party over the other but that our resistance does not begin or end at the ballot box.

Voting like a radical means finding solace amidst this election in the understanding that voting is not a replacement for organizing and it’s not the only way to demonstrate our values and have our voices heard. Instead we lean into our responsibility to continue to build our collective power for long-term systemic changes.

It means employing a diversity of tactics aimed at disrupting the hegemony of the two party system in this capitalist, colonialist state, as necessary actions for building our collective power. For some this looks like voting for an opponent in swing states, for others this means voting third party (especially in non-swing states), and others, to not vote at all but to organize, organize, organize. Part of this strategy means looking beyond voting for a President who will become our opponent, but also ensuring laser-sharp focus on downballot candidates and initiatives that are important for our organizing strategies and collective safety and well-being.

It is with this spirit of deep awareness that we vote like radicals while continuing to ACT out of love, honoring the sacredness and importance of our resistance, as organizers committed to the liberation of all Peoples.

We act for LANDBACK, for black reparations, for reproductive justice, for justice for our immigrant relatives, for safety for our LGBTQIA and non-binary relatives, for economic security for all our Peoples, for protections and safety for our houseless relatives, for the rights of all our children– in short, we act for protections of our relatives and all of sacred life that these colonial, white supremacist systems render most vulnerable. We do this because we remember that we are warriors, living in the time of monsters, and we will use every tactic and tool available to us to free all of our Peoples.

As NDN Collective’s President and CEO, Nick Tilsen, said to the hundreds of thousands at the November 4, 2023 March on Washington D.C. for Gaza, and in the words of Crazy Horse, “How long are you going to let other people decide the future for your children? Are you not warriors? When I look into this crowd today, I see warriors!”

So let’s vote like Radicals and continue to fight and organize like Warriors.