Blue state bubble and reality

A few days ago, I attended and spoke at the press conference launching the Black Maine for Harris-Walz coalition. While I was tangentially involved with the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2020, this is my first time fully committing myself to a candidate and rolling up my sleeves to do whatever it takes to see Harris across the finish line.

My decision to support Harris isn’t easy because as the director of an organization that leans left, my public decision to support Kamala Harris puts me at odds with a number of my colleagues and comrades for whom Harris’s support of Israel is a non-negotiable issue. Unless she unequivocally calls for a ceasefire, works to make it happen, and supports an arms embargo, she will not get their support. For many of my fellow colleagues and comrades, the United States is an empire that must die and be rebuilt as an equitable and just country that does not perpetuate harm, but cares for all.

For them, voting is just staving off the inevitable, so they would rather speed it up. In other words, they are willing to do anything to accelerate the demise of the United States, which is ironic given that on the right and particularly in certain segments of the white nationalist movement, accelerationists are a very real thing. Race wars, anyone?

As someone who has lived much of their adult life leaning left, this is a sobering moment, where I have become deeply aware of how where you live in the United States plays a huge role in whether you are open to supporting to Kamala Harris or are willing to roll the dice on Trump 2.0 pushing us closer to authoritarian rule or to revolution.

Today I saw a post on social media that really spoke about what I had not been quite able to articulate. To paraphrase, it said that many activists/intellectuals online pushing to vote third party or not vote at all either live in blue states, hold dual citizenship, or live abroad. I would go one step further and add that a number (not all) of the activists that I see online who are most vocal about Gaza being the only issue for them also lean to being financially comfortable. Meaning they have the resources—regardless of race—to better weather a second Trump term than most people. Race matters, but money and material privilege can still trump race.

As a nation, we are at a crossroads. The reality is that we are not very united at all. We are divided and, due to preexisting bias, many of us who advocate for justice are more knowledgeable about the lives of people across the world than we are about our fellow citizens.

The funny thing is that for those of us who lean left or progressive, it was our lack of curiosity and silos that were part of the conditions that led to Trump 1.0. If I had a dollar for every time someone in 2016 told me that I was wrong for thinking Trump could win—well, let’s just say my debt would be considerably less right now.

Far too many who live in blue enclaves fail to realize that besides the South being the ancestral home to many American Black folks—many whom have gone back to their roots—it’s home to people who feel unheard and unseen. Yes, they cling to questionable beliefs but Trump despite his buffoonery made many folks feel heard and seen. In a weird way, he still does.

While I think the addition of Walz to the Harris ticket will steal some Trump voters—after all, Walz is what Trump and his sidekick JD Weird pretend to be—the uncomfortable truth is that this thing is not a lock for Harris. There are too many voters—younger, left leaning, and in “safe” blue states—who fail to realize that a large chunk of the country is already living with the prototype of Project 2025. Who fail to realize that a sizeable number of women, including half of Black women in this country, are already living with reproductive restrictions that will only worsen under Trump 2.0.

Activist and organizer colleagues in Southern states are very much operating from a place of Both/And, which I discussed in my last post. But in blue states, too many of us are not.

Folks in the South and truly vulnerable populations know what’s at stake. I recently was reading that some of the many plans for the country that are in Project 2025 include disbanding the Department of Education and Department of Homeland Security, while privatizing the Transportation Security Administration.

Project 2025 calls for a 50% reduction in federal employees the first year and 75 percent within four years. Major impacted groups will be folks of color for whom federal employment has been a gateway to economic security and the middle class, along with veterans who make up 30% of the federal workforce.

Don’t even get me started on his plans for veterans, but I will say that apparently there is a push to privatize the Department of Veterans Affairs.

A lot of the folks who will feel the most intense pain of another Trump term live in red states, but make no mistake, we will all be feeling that pain. The red state/blue state bubble will not protect us from what’s coming down the pike if we don’t move to a both/and mindset and center the most impacted. Because while it may seem like centering the people of Gaza in our voting choices is the moral decision, it absolutely won’t help them if Trump wins. In fact, it creates greater harm for them and jeopardizes our ability to advocate for them or ourselves. In short, we all get fucked. And not in the delightful way.

The thing about creating change in the way that many want is that it requires a willingness to work across our differences and to organize with people we may not like and who may not be fully aligned with us—but finding our shared beliefs/hopes to move a project forward.

In other words, the skills that many on the left are currently lacking are what would be required to survive in a collapse of the United States. If the only available food source in a complete societal collapse is from someone whose values don’t align with yours, but they are willing to keep you from starving, are you going to accept that food or nobly starve to death and let your loved ones starve?

While there are a number of people online saying you can vote your conscience in a safe state, these are uncharted waters in which we are swimming. Nothing about this election season should be taken for granted, in my opinion. Once Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris, it became a new game, one where we need to stay on our toes and assume nothing.

For me, I look to folks in places where they are already feeling the ripples of Trump’s legacy and the majority of those folks are taking nothing for granted and accepting the messiness of the situation. There are too many people with parachutes or access to parachutes who are advocating letting things burn up but who most likely won’t be here for the rebuilding or the pain, if things do go south.

As someone who comes from working-class stock, who despite a couple degrees and a fancy title is still very working class, if things go south, I have no place to go. Neither do my kids or grandbabies. In a country where the average American can’t access an emergency $400 in cash, as much as I want to say torching things will set us on a better course, I fail to see how any of us except those with the resources to go elsewhere or who can live in gated communities will survive a country where the infrastructure that currently works—albeit a bit janky—gets fully dismantled.

I promise that I won’t spend the next sixty-something days writing about this election. But the other day at the Black Maine for Harris Walz press conference, the national campaign sent Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Ohio as a Harris surrogate and she spoke about some of the Biden Administration’s successes, including capping insulin at $35 and the massive investment the administration made to HBCU’s.

Earlier this year, a family member who was unemployed and diabetic needed help getting their insulin for two months until they could get their prescription changed to access the affordable insulin, I helped them cover the cost of their insulin. Let’s just say, it hurt my budget, but family doesn’t let family die because of the cost of insulin. But it was a huge relief when they no longer needed my help.  

A painful observation is that too many of the loudest voices shouting to do what is right or moral, aren’t nearly as familiar with what it means to be in service to others. Over the years, as I have had to help family out at different times, I have met real-life leftists, often from places of family privilege, who are amazed at the levels of support I have provided for family—including paying for my Dad’s days in hospice out of pocket after he hit the limit on inpatient hospice care. But there was no way that I could bring him home to Maine. I am still paying off certain bills from that time, but it’s what we do. Or should, anyway.

By no means am I saying every left-leaning person is financially secure or unable to show up for others. But it is true that too many have been cosplaying as social change agents. Black Lives Matters, anyone?

Revolution is messy business and requires a lot more than posting online and showing up at protests. Or canceling people with whom we disagree. Revolution requires a willingness to embrace the real possibility of death and violence, and I suspect this is where the right has us beat. If nothing else, I learned on January 6 that there are people willing to kill and harm for their beliefs, no matter how misguided. As much as I want to say that we don’t need to do that, revolution with the American war machine means accepting that.

No doubt, I will lose some readers and supporters and at this point I will accept that as the price of speaking my truth. Now, do something.

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