The Revolution Needs More Than Just Your Vote
If you want to affect real change, it’s going to take more work than just your vote.
Over the past two weeks Americans have been presented with two very different approaches to our future. I won’t pretend to say that both parties were equal in their endeavor; to be sure, the two paths were so divergent I believe 2016 will go down in history as one of the major turning points of our republic. Plenty of people have already spent countless hours writing about the parties’ visions of the next four years – including me – and I’m pretty sure we’re all over the theatrics and ready to get down to business.
Here’s the thing: It’s not enough just to vote in November and hope it all goes away. I wish it were, but it’s not. Voting is great – don’t get me wrong, I love voting and I’ve never missed an election day I in which I was eligble to vote.Â
Voting is good. You should do it. (Register now if you haven’t already!) But voting won’t hold your candidates and representatives accountable. Voting is one of the last ways to influence policy. By the time you’re voting, your candidate’s race is over. They’ve said all they’re going to say. And when it comes time to re-elect, you’re voting either to keep them around because you’re happy with them or you’re voting to get rid of them. Voting is black-and-white, all-or-nothing.Â
If you really want to change the world and the direction we’re going in, you’ve got to get in early and make yourself known.
- Organize in your neighborhood. Local elections are often decided by a handful of votes. Here in Georgia we had a race decided last week by 8 votes. If the loser had just motivated 9 more people to vote, she would have won. Seriously. If you can manage to get 50, 100, or 250 people together on something, you can run the table in local issues. That’s huge.
- Volunteer for a campaign. Volunteering is the absolute easiest way to make things happen, but it can also be the worst. If you don’t mind putting in the hours to make an impact, volunteering can be the stepping stone to real policy input. You’ve got to be ready to show up, make the phone calls and do the grunt work, but if you do, you’ll get noticed. I started out making phone calls for a campaign and by the week of the election I was writing the candidate’s statements because I was willing to do whatever it took to make sure the candidate (and I) was heard.
- Get to know your local legislators. Whether it’s your city council member or state legislator, meet them. Learn their names, and make them learn yours. The majority of laws and policies that affect you will come from your state and local government. If you want to make a real change – perhaps you’ve been motivated by the thought of some sort of â€revolution†or something, this is how you do it. It won’t be through the presidency; it’ll be through the guy that decides whether your neighbor can have a permit to renovate his house or through the woman who decides that the state government can take over your local school if it’s not meeting her standards.Â
- Make yourself heard. This one’s more abstract, but just as easy. Get your voice out there. Direct action is good and fine, and it certainly has its place – but it’s just one way of many to change public opinion. The folks who vote are the same folks who actually read letters to the editor in the paper. They also read the op/ed articles and blog posts on Medium or other sites. A well written article really can change someone’s mind (unlike your aunt’s Facebook post, of course).Â
It’s easy to get disillusioned with politics, I know, and there are very few times I would ever use a tactic that even remotely resembles victim blaming, but here it is: It’s too easy to get involved and influence change. If you choose not to make something happen, you deserve exactly what you get. No, it’s not going to happen over night, and it’s going to take a lot of work, but if you sit on the sidelines it will never happen at all, and we’ve sat through too many hours listening to Donald Trump open his mouth and say something disgusting for it all to be a waste of time.Â
It’s time to get to work.
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Robbie Medwed is an Atlanta-based LGBTQ activist and educator. His column appears here weekly. Follow him on Twitter: @rjmedwed
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Image by jordi.martorell via Flickr and a CC license
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