Anti-Electoral Voting in the Time of War

...
As far as the antiwar movement being involved in the electoral elections we need to realize the position that we our endorsing. Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution states that, the President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. So when the antiwar movement votes for president they are voting for this position. To think that the president would not honor that role is a far cry from reality. This is akin to asking a police officer not to be a police officer while they are being a police officer. Buy voting for this position we are reinforcing a system of empire and of war.

We in the antiwar movement who use the non-violent paradigm tend to replicate at home what we are fighting against abroad when we vote in the elections. We fight against the perpetrated violence committed by the troops of both sides but here at home we legitimize a system that gives the state the power to be the only enforcer of legitimate violence as an institution. The violence that the state partakes in is negative sanctions against the poor, paramilitary police forces, police brutality, prisons, surveillance, Cointelpro, death penalty, and many other violent actions. The elected official could try to reform some of these issues but these are the type of practices that help keep class privilege in tack.

When we vote in the American system we are giving our collective community empowerment over to an elected few that uphold the capitalist system. When these people take power we enter into a paternalist relationship and we collectively loose our voice and power. They tell us what our values are, they never ask. Every time there has been any real reform done such as civil rights, Medicaid, welfare, the eight-hour workday, affirmative action, environmental controls, etc. it was through long hard battles by the people and not by a few elected officials. And when we allow this to go on over time these same elected officials will over time erode these very reforms. We can see it now in the erosion of affirmative action in Michigan, Bush’s cutting overtime pay, etc. Instead as anarchists we believe that we should empower and put our effort into direct action. By direct action I am referring to protests, wild strikes, general strikes, sit-downs, council-communism, participatory democracy, restorative justice, consumer boycotts, and again etc. What direct action basically means is act for yourself instead of getting a politician to act for you. When we practice direct action, “it shatters the dependency and marginalisation created by” (Anarchists FAQ, J.2) living in a hierarchical society. We realize that we can conduct our own lives in an ethical manner without relying on the police state.
...

Yet as anarchists we do not advocate for apathy around not voting, instead of voting we need to advocate and agitate to form real direct democracy in our work place and in our communities and to fight inequality and all of it’s ugly heads.

Instead of the anti-war movement putting it's energy into getting a democrat in office, or the “anybody but Bush,” we should be organizing outside of “excepted” paths of change (like electoral voting) and building a real threat to the state and capital powers.

Towards a revolutionary organized anarchist resistance.

-A member of the North Star Anarchist Collective, FRAC