by Kate Drabinski
Senior Lecturer, Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies
Director, WILL+ Program
I love voting. My mom took my twin sister and me to the polls with her every time, and sometimes even let us poke the hole in the ballot. We voted in our elementary school gym where there was always a bake sale going on, and we always got a treat. Cemented in my body and mind is the knowledge that I have to vote, and voting day, no matter how it goes, will always come with a little treat. This year, it was pizza and mini Snickers bars, and a whole lot of TV.
What I have learned from 27 years of voting, though, is that it is just one tiny little part of what it means for me to be an engaged citizen. Our representative democracy means that whomever we elect, the chances they’re going to share my values are really tiny. Elected officials represent huge swaths of a diverse population with diverse needs, demands, and priorities. I can count on zero hands how many times I’ve felt like my whole self was at the political table due to my vote. If I really want to build the world I want, I have to do that building outside the voting booth, even as what I do in the booth can make a real difference.
This November, the importance of organizing beyond the vote has become even clearer to me. We elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but I know that doesn’t mean they are coming to save us. I look out at a world where one in three families with children is food insecure, where unemployment rates are high—and even those with jobs often don’t make enough money to make ends meet, and where a global pandemic is raging through the nation with nary a hint of aid or leadership at the national level. So, I voted, and I’m glad for the results, but I know that the results will not change the lives of people in my community any time soon.
In the wake of the pandemic I am increasingly drawn to the work of people organizing mutual aid projects. Mutual aid means coming together and sharing resources—skills, food, emotional support, etc.—with each other. It means that we organize to save ourselves at the same time we organize to challenge the state and its structures that produce the very precarity that threatens so many of us.
I voted, gave myself a treat, and am doubling down on my efforts to use the resources I have to support the communities I am in and that I actively build—in my city, my neighborhood, and in my classrooms. All we have is each other, and that is what is getting me through a rough 2020, and it will be my balm through the challenges ahead.
Contact the author, Kate Drabinski, at drabinsk@UMBC.edu.