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Friends,
The mania of elections and voting has seized the American imagination, and as usual, it brings about its accompanying threats and promises. It seems like, as usual, the stakes are higher than ever. And the anxiety and urgency that we see each and every day can pull anyone in the moment they consider it. Of course, the lines are mostly already drawn as usual – it’s not like anyone needs more information about Donald Trump, or Kamala Harris or the Democratic Party. And everyone who has decided to vote for The Green Party Jill Stein has probably already been swayed.

Also as usual no one will “win” this election, since there’s no real hope that anyone is actually being represented by these figureheads and their accompanying administrations. So all that will happen is that one candidate will be less-not-elected than another candidate, and we will call that candidate a winner. 

But the fervor, the accusations continue nevertheless.

How do we think past all of this – even walk away from the election – in a way that doesn’t diminish our ability to engage with what is meaningful and important in the political realm?

To discuss that, I’ve invited two of my favorite guests (and two of my favorite people to talk with in general) SHULI BRANSON and DEAN SPADE back onto the show!

Shuli appeared most recently on AEWCH 254 considering: what does an anarchy of peace look like? They’re an activist, author of Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life; the co-editor of Surviving the Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies, and host of the podcast The Breakup Theory (an its accompanying blog blog, both of which you can support via patreon!)

Dean has been on the show multiple times, most recently on AEWCH 200 in conversation with me and Mitch Horowitz. His latest episode with just he and I talking was AEWCH 179, on how to live with spirituality and organizing at the same time. He’s organizer, teacher, and author of multiple books including Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together which you can preorder now; Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), which is an essential handbook for connecting with your neighbors and others to do woerk from the ground up, and the heart; and also Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law.

I asked each of them to bring a question to inspire us to think towards creative engagement but away from the state. Along with mine, here are those three questions:

Shuli: How do we get around the overwhelm of the conditions so that we can act or make life in line with liberation now?

Dean: How does the current state of the collapse of consumer industrial society impact if and how we engage with the state?

Me: What would we do with our lives if they were not just about diminishing suffering because there was no longer a need to do that?

All of these questions are asked with the intention of bringing us into doing more and appreciating and affirming being as we do. So instead of getting further entangled in what is going to happen with the state – or worse, with the ultimately menial question of your vote – I hope you’ll consider and focus on questions like these and the ways they can energizer you for creative engagement instead. 

In creation,

CH