downas

• The occupation government of the united states currently “recognizes 574 American Indian tribes and Alaska Native entities” within the territories it claims to rule. This is an undercount, considering that there are many peoples who are only recognized by local regimes—or not at all. Among the unrecognized are the numerous African peoples whose cultures were devastated or destroyed by the transatlantic slave trade, a wave of atrocities whose chief benefactors founded the modern world. At no point in the past or present have these facts deterred the occupiers from voting in elections. Why, then, should anyone expect the fact of u.s. weapons used against indigenous peoples in Palestine to produce a “change of heart”?

• Voters have no power over the actions of the yankee entity—which is not to say that if they did, they would use it to destroy european colonialism or any of its attendant nation-states. Rather than a means by which the colonists choose their leaders, it seems more accurate to consider voting as a ritual whose practitioners express their identification with the entity's culture and institutions.

• Within the yankee entity, voter registrations and campaign donations are a matter of public record. It is possible—in some localities, quite easy—for a resident to legally obtain the given address of anyone who donated to an election campaign or is registered to vote. Refusing to participate is the only way to remain exempt.

Once again:

• If slavery & genocide didn't stop any of the other elections, they sure as hell won't disrupt this one.

• People don't vote because it changes anything, they vote because they have a stake in the system & don't wanna give it up.

• You can't play the electoral game without snitching on yourself.

Here, then, are some parting words.

• “do not bother stirring the emotions of Americans and trying to jerk their tears over us. What's more useful is to dismantle the idea of the United States in their minds as a prelude to making them understand our cause and our rights. Any effort that doesn't include this will be washed away as easily as sea foam.” – Bassel al-Araj (باسل الأعرج)

• “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” – Assata Olugbala Shakur (أساتا أولوغبالا شكور)