ELECTIONS: DO NOT WASTE YOUR VOTE: This is our ONE AND ONLY shot to Destroy the Status Quo

You cannot vote for change if you do not change your vote

Photo by Cyrus Crossan on Unsplash

Opportunities like these come once in a lifetime if we are lucky. The truth is that they usually come in several lifetimes. Generations after generations are passed over for these opportunities; they never arise in their lifetimes, the gift passes over them to the next.

We are one of the fortunate generations on which the mantle has fallen. We have the chance to make real, enduring change.

We can change the status quo.

The UK election has been called for 4th July 2024. Both main parties aim to fight it on varying degrees of racism because they do have not much else left in their pockets. No one believes either of them will really solve any economic problems, and Starmer - who believes Israel has the right to cut off water and electricity to the Gazans - is going to walk it because people are fed up with their bills going up and their quality of lives going down courtesy of over a decade of Conservative (mis)rule.

The biggest problem with the social media and ‘tech’ generation is that it really has decimated working memory and collective attention span. This is fantastic for politicians; it means they think we will forget how they sabotaged Jeremy Corbyn, or how the Lib Dems U-tuned and helped the Conservatives introduce huge University tuition fees, ensuring a knife into the heart of social mobility, or how the Conservatives gave huge contracts to their cronies during Covid.

The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock during the pandemic was responsible for his government ushering in rules that meant ill relatives died alone during Covid, their children and grandchildren, siblings and parents unable to give them comfort during their final weeks and hours, while he himself broke those very same guidelines to have an affair and cheat on his wife. So short were the memories of his hypocritical behaviour and cruel rule-making, that only a year later, he was rehabilitated on ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here!’ a reality TV show where ‘celebrities’ who want attention at any cost, are happy to eat things like kangaroo testicles on TV. The fact that people still watched the show despite this man being on it after his disastrous and destructive behaviours and actions as an MP, shows you how very goldfish-like our brains really are becoming.

Short memories and emotive, instant reactions mean that movements cannot grow. Social media connects us, but it destroys the neurological aspects of our minds that allow us to build enduring communities. This is the same with all tech designed for ‘efficiency’. We don’t need to cook, whatever food we want appears at our doors in mere minutes from pressing buttons on an app. Drive? A cheap taxi will be there in 3 minutes. TV series? Binge it in a day. We wait for nothing; we do not have the capacity to do so; we do not know the virtue of patience; we do not even know what patience is.

It is for this reason that the Palestinians are shocking the world. Their resilience in the face of massacre and torture, dehumanisation and cruelty beyond anything the world has ever witnessed. They have patience. In their grief and in the absolute depths of human despair, they show patience and strength in their faith. Watch the videos, and listen to them, “Hasbinu Allah wa ni’ma wakeel” they say over and over again. “God, you are sufficient for us and you are our Protector.”

In Islam, the test of life IS patience. “O believers! Seek comfort in patience and prayer.” Patience, “sabr”, is what we struggle with, but it is an ultimate component for success.

Patience isn’t just sitting and doing nothing. No, it means sitting and doing; and if that doing is something you cannot do; then it is it is actively waiting. We cannot actively stop the genocide in Palestine; we cannot stop the Israeli army from raining their bombs and driving their tanks. But we can attend protests. We can boycott. And we can wait.

Nothing on earth is immutable. Everything changes. Food rots. Bodies age. Leaves change colour and fall off their branches. Beaches full of pebbles become coasts of sand. Patience, sabr, is actively waiting for that inevitable change.

Mandela was in prison for 27 years. His whole life was spent for the cause and he won. He sat and waited, patiently, patiently, patiently; “Sabr, sabr, sabr,” as my mother says.

It’s a patience we do not have. It’s a patience we are in awe of. It’s a patience our propaganda machine and social media apps attack daily, day in and day out.

The movement to end Apartheid in South Africa took decades. The civil rights movement in the US took decades. The movement to free Palestine has taken decades. To free ourselves from global imperialism, neoliberal wealth hoarding and climate destruction will take decades.

We Need to Start the Movement.

This election is lost. We in the UK will not be able to unseat a Labour or Tory government in this election. They are identical in their neoliberal and imperialistic ideologies: they are identical in supporting war, war crimes and genocide.

HOWEVER, every movement starts somewhere. If we do not contribute now to eroding the status quo, these parties will continue to be all-powerful. The only way to change the status quo IS TO VOTE against it. By doing so we will create a real alternative and a real way to fight the status quo.

The idea that this is the election to overthrow the status quo is ludicrous. It has taken Palestine 76 years of ethnic cleansing and genocide to get their voice heard and the oppressor to finally be given an arrest warrant. 76 years.

We cannot be short-sighted. We must play the long game. We must have a long-term strategy.

The next PM will be a genocider or fully complicit in genocide - Rishi Sunak or Keir Stamer.

As such, it ultimately does not matter who wins in our constituencies. All the three main parties ARE all the same. They are all friends of Israel and they will all continue neoliberal and imperialistic policies.

What does matter though, is the alternative candidate gets votes - and a significant amount of votes. That for the next election, people will already know them and that in that next election, they can then win. What matters is the status quo unholy trinity is shaken by a fourth; a David to their Goliath, punching above their weight and having sabr, patience, actively waiting for the next election in 4 years, to land the final blow. That is the long-sighted, strategic game. That is the movement. This is how we begin to grow its strength. This is how we lay its seeds. In 4 years, those seeds will be trees.

This IS the election to show we want alternatives. The alternatives will not win overall in government. However, the movement WILL start.

This election, we have a choice: vote for the status quo

Or

Vote for the beginnings of the movement and the fight against the status quo to begin.

Your vote IS lost if you don't support the movement.

And IT IS LOST if you refuse to take responsibility now and fight.

Movements and fights for humanity take YEARS. They take YEARS. Look at history. Look at Palestine.

We MUST start the fight. We MUST start the movement. That's the point of these elections. To start the dismantling of the status quo as it is: the imperialism; the forever wars and massacres, the forever enriching the few at the expense of the rest of us, the destruction of the very earth we need to survive.

We have to start somewhere. We have to show them we will fight back.

THIS NOW - in the Western World - IS THE MOMENT to start the MOVEMENT for the GLOBAL LIBERATION OF US ALL.

The only way to disrupt the status quo is to not vote for the status quo candidates: the Conservatives, Labour or the Liberal Democrats. Vote instead for those not connected to the status quo: the independent candidates, the Worker’s Party candidates and the Green candidates.

Let’s work for a better world for us all: let’s start the movement for peace and liberation. Let’s use our vote.