Politicians will not save us:we will save us

During my stand-up show last month, someone asked me what I thought about Zohran. It’s the first time I’ve hesitated before answering a question during a show. Usually I have a biting musing ready to be fired. This time, I let the audience into my brain. I generally don’t do that because the audience wants me to be sure, confident.

I told the audience I didn’t want to say what I thought, because this was a comedy show and I don’t want them to turn on me. The most important part about hosting a comedy show is creating a vibe where everyone is happy and wants to laugh.

I usually do this by brutally roasting liberals and asking people if they love Lenin.

However, my show was in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The headquarters of “Hot Girls for Zohran,” a collective of New Yorkers who organised to support Mamdani in his mayoral campaign. These hot girls don’t want to hear anything negative about Zohran. 

So, when I was asked, I was silent for a moment. Then I responded. “I remember Obama.” The audience erupted in laughter. Then I said, “I remember Bernie.” They laughed but not as loudly. I said, “I remember AOC” – a few chuckles. I told an old joke I wrote about politicians.

“I hate politicians so much I don’t even listen to them. If I wanted to listen to people who I didn’t like or didn’t agree with, I would get on a zoom call with my coworkers.”

Uncomfortable laughter.

I felt isolated. This audience is usually on my side, but today, they had picked Zohran over me. 

For the first time in my entire stand up career, I stood on a stage and thought to myself: I don’t want to be here telling jokes. I don’t want to perform if I have to silence myself. If I can’t get on stage and launch into a diatribe of how electoral politics will never save us, I’d rather stay at home and eat vegan grilled cheese sandwiches.

Electoral politics won’t save us 

Four days later, I saw Calla Walsh’s latest Substack post: “Tell Lies, Claim Easy Victories.” Her subtitle explained my feelings in a nutshell: It is easier to look to a figure like Mamdani as a means to an end and keep gobbling up our imperial superprofits than it is to confront the fact that only we can save ourselves. 

“The enemy state benefits from nothing more than the funnelling of potentially revolutionary energy into reformist electoral politics,” I read aloud to my husband. “The Democratic Party, including the Democratic Socialists of America, is defined by co-optation and neutralisation of liberation movements.” I was weeping. I realised I wasn’t alone, and these words reminded me that there are so many people out there not falling for the politician will save you trick again! 

The first sentences of Calla’s piece are the same words I spoke at my show. Here we are, two different people in different places, yet our spirit remembers the lies. The trickery of the state and the capitalists. Every single time they say this is the one. This is the one politician who will change your life. We know all the other ones have lied and disappointed you. However, this one is different. They are going to give you free healthcare, they are going to give you [insert whatever life changing thing].

I’m not above it. I’ve fallen for the good ole vote your way to freedom trick too. I get the appeal of someone promising your free buses if you are too scared to not pay, or rent freezes when thinking about rent makes you want to cry. I volunteered for Bernie’s first campaign because he said universal healthcare. I knocked on doors for Phara and Jabari.

But then I read How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney where he states: “if there is no class stratification in a society, it follows that there is no state, because the state arose as an instrument to be used by a particular class to control the rest of society in its own interests.”

I stopped knocking on doors after that. I understood then by knocking on doors I was asking my community to believe asking our oppressors to stop oppressing us would work. By knocking on doors I was telling people if they vote for the person who gets to hold Godzilla’s leash, so that then Godzilla won’t be so mean to them.

Direct action gets the goods 

I refuse to knock on a door for someone to give me things that we can give ourselves through direct action. Things that the state has taken away from us. Electoral politics siphons energy from direct action that can actually achieve material change. 

The Black Panthers succeeded in not only providing a robust free breakfast programme that fed thousands of children, but also in forcing the government to provide free breakfast for children. The government viewed the provision of food by a radical party as a threat and went to great lengths to destroy the programme – including sending the police to “urinate on food”. 

Yes, this is disgusting and another reminder that all cops are bad and will always be bad. Nonetheless it was because of the Black Panther’s programme that children now get free breakfast in school, not through some cool politician with a social media following.  

A lesser known programme, the Black Panthers’ health clinics, also influenced government policy. The Black Panthers opened free clinics to ameliorate the discrimination Black people faced in healthcare. The clinics performed screenings, especially for sickle-cell anemia – which disproportionately affected Black people but was not a government focus. As a result of the clinics, the government passed the National Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act of 1972 which legislated the creation of sickle-cell screening and treatment nationwide. 

Like the breakfast programme the free health clinics were the target of government suppression proving again that the state will seek legitimacy by destroying local autonomy. 

Yet autonomous direct action still delivers the goods. When the residents of the Independence Towers in Kansas faced deteriorating living conditions they didn’t wait for a politician to save them. They went on a 248 day rent strike starting last year which forced their state funded landlord to freeze rents and commit to building repairs. If only the tenants would have kept the building FOREVER! 

Collective liberation requires community 

From the Kansas City tenants to the Black Panthers, the state is the foundation of the harm – or at least only emerges to impede communal progress. Hence, I refuse to knock on doors because it legitimises our biggest oppressor: THE FUCKING STATE. The state evicts us from our homes for landlords, then asks if they can help us with housing. The state forces us to work at gunpoint by seizing the commons then tells us, I’m here to keep you safe.

I don’t believe the powers of the state can be seized for good because it centralises power and shreds our autonomy to serve capital. Instead of relying on the state to save us from the state’s plundering, we can feed each other through mutual aid. We can share – instead of endlessly consuming – through tool libraries and clothing swaps. Most importantly, we need to frequently be with one another: eat together, laugh together, and cry together. The state and corporations isolate us from each other because together we are stronger. 

The first time my building in Flatbush held a meeting to discuss the horrendous living conditions the landlord called the police proving our most important super power is each other. David Graeber said we wake up every morning to build this world: that means we can wake up one day and decide to build another. The most powerful thing we can do to ideate and build a better world is to stop viewing each other as competitors but as comrades, to stop seeking safety in individual accumulation but collective liberation. It will be difficult; we will stumble, but we will keep going until we free ourselves. 

I’m not seeking perfection. I’m seeking freedom. I believed Lucy Parsons when she said: “Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”