“There’s too much at stake.”

This is the sentence I have been hearing liberals offer in defense of their unenthusiastic choice to vote for Kamala Harris. These words usually come with a sigh, a shake of the head, a knowing look of resignation. “Of course, I hate what’s happening to Palestinians, and I will keep calling my senators about a ceasefire, but it’s just not the right time to vote third party.”



                                        “There’s too much at stake.”



I have been too thoroughly trained in Southern politeness to speak my mind in these conversations, but after a year of watching Democrats cheerlead the slaughter of my loved ones’ friends and families in Palestine, I cannot keep my anger in check any longer. Yes, there is much at stake in this election, and as citizens of the most powerful and destructive empire in the world, we must also think about what is at stake for the rest of the world. If you think that something worse than the genocide in Gaza could possibly happen to you, the American voter, under a Trump presidency, take a good long look at the news from Palestine, absorb the level of suffering that the American empire subjects people to, and bring yourself down to fucking earth.



                                        “There’s too much at stake.”



What is “at stake” is the ability of an elected official to facilitate a genocide and suffer absolutely zero consequences from their constituents. In the last year, the Biden-Harris administration has sent $17.9 billion to the Israeli military, vetoed numerous UN ceasefire resolutions, and offered endless rhetorical cover for their greatest ally as it bombs, starves, and massacres a trapped group of people that is fifty percent children. It has become perfectly clear that no world leaders have the guts or the power to hold Americans responsible for their horrifying, world-destroying depravity. International law is a sham when its application is dictated by the very criminals it should protect the world from. Our calls to Congress reach the ears of Democrats and Republicans alike who are paid by the Israel lobby to slaughter hundreds of thousands of people and then lie to the people they know will keep voting for them no matter what. The only significant challenges to the American Zionist killing machine are the armed resistance movements and direct actions from the citizens of the empire, whose ability to hit the nerve of imperialism is revealed in the hyper-militarized force deployed (under Democrats and Republicans alike) to suppress the elevation of our collective consciousness. A year goes by, and the imperial genocide has only, somehow, gotten worse, with no one able to stop it.

                                        “There’s too much at stake.”

                                        “There’s too much at stake.”

Perhaps we are numb to the figures, so I will remind you of an individual. Shaban al-Dalou, nineteen years old, burned to death beside his mother in an American Zionist air strike on his tent outside Al-Aqsa Hospital. May God rest their souls. I feel the need to keep repeating myself, because you don’t seem to get it. The Biden-Harris-Netanyahu administration burned a nineteen-year-old and his mother to death in a tent on the grounds of a besieged hospital. There is nothing more evil than genocide, but liberals must not believe this since they keep calling Harris the “lesser of two evils..” If you agree that there is nothing more evil than genocide and still think Harris is a more moral choice than Trump, then your connection to the world beyond your American experience is horribly severed. 

Perhaps the word genocide has become too common in our speech. We wake up to it on our phones every day. We use the word in daily conversation to reference what is happening in Palestine. We witness the genocide in one moment and go grocery shopping in the next. It has become something that we, the outside observers, are accustomed to—just like we watch the trucks on the highway carry living beings to slaughter and fail to disrupt the flow of traffic. One year in, we are accepting that genocide is something that happens and that we have no hope of ending. We will call our right-wing senators and drop pennies in GoFundMes and accept that this is the best we can do. But I promise you that genocide does not become more normal or bearable or acceptable for those who experience it. For them, an end to genocide, occupation, and colonization is non-negotiable. So, maybe we need to start using a different word, one to put some fire under our asses to actually fight the status quo. Shaban and his mother burned to death in an American-Zionist Holocaust, funded by American taxpayers. The word Holocaust contains what the white West knows as the worst things that humans can do to humans. So I will repeat: Kamala Harris is funding and defending and therefore committing a Holocaust, and she has the audacity to pretend that she isn’t. History will remember her and all our government officials complicit in this act among the ranks of the Nazis. No excuse will absolve those who allow this slaughter machine to continue by voting for its operator.

What exactly is at stake? The Democratic Party is relying on your fear for your perceived safety to override your conscience and belief in the power of people to hold politicians accountable and create the world we want to live in. If you vote for Trump, you reward a white supremacist, xenophobic rapist with another period of power. If you vote for Harris, you reward the “girlboss” of a modern day, ongoing, ever-worsening Holocaust with another period of power, and you surrender the only leverage you truly have over your government. Just as the worker’s power comes from their ability to withhold their labor from oppressive bosses, the citizen’s power is found in their ability to withhold their vote from undeserving politicians. The boss does not survive without their workers; the politician does not survive without their voters. The two party system only continues as long as its citizens believe it is their only option. You can vote for the empire to continue chugging us toward a world with more Holocausts and climate catastrophes. Blue or red, it doesn’t matter. They are both bullies who support fascists and dictators, and they are paid by the same corporations and PACs to convince you to vote for your own demise. Voting blue is not something for liberals to sigh knowingly about, as if they are good people forced to do something bad. You have other options, the only ones with any power to challenge the American empire, the ones that the Holocaust architects are terrified of. You can vote for the world you want to live in. You can vote with hope, courage, and radical optimism. You can vote for a living Palestine, a living Sudan, a living Congo, a living Turtle Island, a living world. You can vote with a willingness to sacrifice for a future without Holocausts.

I have chosen this other option, along with the over forty percent of the American Muslim population who polling shows are voting third party. In many of the swing states, polling indicates that support for Green Party candidate Jill Stein surpasses Harris. Democrats cannot win without Muslim votes, and Harris doesn’t have enough of them. The Abandon Harris movement ensured this on November 1, 2023, back when they abandoned Biden over his unwavering support for the fledgling Holocaust, and on October 7, 2024, when they unified the power of the dissenters by endorsing Jill Stein, an anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist Jewish woman and Rudolph Ware, her Black Muslim running mate, for the presidential ticket. The American Muslim population has been the only group principled enough for a significant number of them to act in line with the belief that a world with genocide is unacceptable. They find allies in people of all backgrounds who have the guts to hold our government accountable for the hellfire it rains onto the rest of the world. We are united in our belief that we have to create the world we want to live in and now is exactly the right time to do it. 

                                        “There’s too much at stake.”

Remember what is at stake: a future where American politicians can obliterate a group of people and their citizens will reward them with another term in office. A world where genocide is posited as a lesser evil because it happens to someone other than you. A system that denies you healthcare, housing, education, and rest as it uses your money to decimate hospitals, homes, schools, and human beings in their sleep. I don’t want to live in that world, and I know you don’t either. I’m not asking you to take up arms or set yourself on fire outside a Zionist embassy. I am asking you to do the bare minimum, to fill in a bubble beside the name of a person who is not a white supremacist, xenophobic rapist or the proud puppeteer of the deadliest empire the world has ever seen. Perhaps, once we have learned to vote with our consciences, we will be ready to act for the oppressed without fear. So, I am asking you to vote with a liberated consciousness. Vote with hope. Vote with the power to hold your scum-of-the-earth politicians accountable like no one else in the burning world can. Vote with a goddamn spine. There is too much at stake for us to cower.