#administration

and he wasted it by leaving early.

You don't have to like Democrats at all. Hell, I don't like a lot of them either. That's not why I vote for them. Voting is not a popularity contest and it is not an arena where virtue tends to win.

You are picking the people who get to decide what kind of resistance you face in protests. You are picking the people who decide how to deploy the DoJ and other branches of law enforcement against your political club, your church, your communities. You are picking how zoning laws get decided on, who gets let into your communities in the first place.

Too many leftists and center-left folks have swallowed and then propagated right-wing talking points. When people say that Republicans and Democrats are two wings of the same bird, you should be able to see now what bullshit that is. It is pushing you to denigrate and deny the power of your vote. When people say 'they are both as bad' when one side is actively dismantling the ability of people to be safe in their homes, get married, have due process of the law, and provide for their families, you should be able to see with your own eyes now that this is bullshit. When one side propagates multiple simultaneous trade wars, not only lowering our standing in the world but actively hollowing out our ability to live, let alone thrive, you should be able to see the bullshit for what it is.

If you do not get involved in the political process, do not sit here and bitch about how hopeless everything is. Angela Davis did not tell you to sit down, she told you to fucking vote, and to keep on pushing long-term for the things we need. If you cannot see, top to bottom, how necessary it is to keep on pushing for change and to keep on voting, to keep on pushing for folks and yes, be disappointed and keep fucking showing up, then you do not have the stomach for any kind of revolutionary action and you are a liability to the communities you would hope to advocate for.

We are in this for the long haul. Our enemies have been for the last 50+ years. If you want something left to fight for at the end of the day, if you think that the way things are cannot continue, then stop denying every avenue for change to come through. One of the most straightforward ways is the ballot box. Are we going to get everything we want? Not immediately, hell maybe not even in our lifetimes. That should not the deciding factor on whether we keep advocating, keep fighting, keep doing the work. If you are going to see things improve, you have to dedicate to doing the small things, the not-so-sexy things, the small actions that lead to big change, and for keeping on showing up. Not just for the flashy protests. You need to show up in ways that matter to your communities. Protests are visible, but they are not always the best use of time, energy, or organizations' power.

If you are going to take lessons from history, look at how the Civil Rights era was able to make change. Bottom up, concerted efforts in multiple small arenas from dedicated work and ongoing multigenerational efforts which included advocacy, care, and a lot of background support. If you approach this from a tactical POV, which I believe are one of several useful ways to do so, then understand how many people were behind one front-line protester, one advocate, one person with a microphone calling for change. We cannot do it all. We should not. We should and can do what is in our power to do, and for some of us the support we can give is our vote, and maybe a dollar as we try to continue to eke out an existence. For others, front-line work is needed from them. For others, support like watching kids, making meals, or doing back-end organizing.

If you take the step of denying your power of the vote, of denying your ability to vocally make change, you are doing the enemy's work for them. They want that control because you can gum up the works by putting their opposition in charge. An opposition that is more likely to listen to you because you fucking showed up to vote. Democrats have no need to cater to those who will not show up, and leftists are notoriously shit at it, and that has to change. We need to be concentrated avenues of change, and in order to do that we not only need to show up, we need to stay involved.

So far we have 3 confirmed realms that house sentient anthropomorphic animals. The Serpentine are the only ones who have been semi-confirmed to have a chance to be related to Chima. So I think it'd be really funny if most of Chima ends up vibing with people from the Wyldness WAYYY better than the Serpentine. Just to be annoying