By Teka Lark (August 10, 2015)
In Seattle, Washington on Saturday, August 8 #BlackLiveMatters activists (or someone who said they were #BlackLivesMatters activists) disrupted a Bernie Sanders speaking engagement.
I can’t be upset about disruption. My objective is disruption. I am “building” is a scaffold to tear down this system.
I do not care that #BLM is going after Bernie Sanders.
I do not care who goes after Bernie Sanders.
I do not care if it’s organized or unorganized.
I don’t think voting for anyone is the solution.
Within this system regardless of who wins, I am going to lose. This system was designed with the idea that the stealing of land and murdering of Native Americans and the kidnapping, enslavement and raping of Africans, was and is OK, for the greater good.
The greater good is rich white people.
Do I think all disruption has the goal of disruption? No.
Do I think all disruption has the end goal to dismantle this system? No, I do not.
The beauty of disruption is that there is no wrong or right way to do it. The politics of the disruptor doesn’t matter. Even if the disruptor is for the other guy (or gal) they light a fire that leads the way to the idea that we don’t have only the choices that are presented to us.
I am not going to publicly challenge disruption. The “good” political machine of the progressive Democrats has offered me $15.00 an hour part time and rent so high I have to move to the desert.
I’m not going to have a problem with anyone who disrupts the political process in the US. I have no respect the US political process.
The mainstream voting left is a damn joke.
I am going to be selfish here and ask the question to the so-called “real” left —What is fighting for Bernie going to do for me?
Third partyish people have zero idea how to be civil to people outside their little idea of perfection. They will cut people off for using the wrong term in a social media update. Everyone to them is racist or sexist (except for them, because they are perfect,) but they think they can win an election and change the world through the ballot box. They are pawns to get people on the left engaged in a process that doesn’t work.
I’m a radical.I have zero time for little conversations with people who invest decades on upholding and changing this corrupt system — from inside the corrupt system.
I hate referencing movies, but did you see Serpico, even the system knows the system can’t be fixed from inside the system. The system isn’t broken. The system is working perfectly.
In the end voting is you saying you believe this can work, I don’t.
Vote, don’t vote, I don’t care, because it to me is all proof that this doesn’t work.
When you vote you give them a receipt that says you chose this.
Did you choose the US we have today?
Now that being said in the contest of the lesser of two evils, well one it is still evil isn’t it? You want perfection with your organic coffee, but the person who is running the country you say, “We have to pick someone!”
No, you don’t have to pick a person that will kill you with the least amount of pain.
I should pick candidate A, because candidate B hates me and I have no choice?
“Republicans hate Black people!” isn’t a good enough reason as to why I should participate in this bullshit and vote for Bernie (or Hillary,) it is also patronizing.
If all you have for Black people is a race based argument as to why we should vote for Sanders then you clearly think we are morons and you certainly don’t get me at all.
Sanders doesn’t get a cookie, because he marched with Martin Luther King.
And you sir and madam also don’t get me or a cookie for constantly trying to explain to me that my race is a symptom like the sniffles. It’s not a distraction or symptom and I probably have read more Marx than you. I will debate you anytime on that misinterpreted point.
Now I am taking this fill in the bubble scantron Bernie Sanders test, setting it on fire and lighting my joint with that fire.
Fuck this test. Fail me.
Teka Lark is a journalist, poet and satirist based in the L.A. suburb of Inglewood. She is the founder of the Blk Grrrl Book Fair and the editor of Blk Grrrl Magazine. www.blkgrrrl.com