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No chance?

The argumentative basis for not voting third party is a fallacious and dangerously misguided notion. Having said that, I will illustrate why using historical precedent.

Working within a broken system to make changes is not the trending pattern of success for any civil rights movement. When Susan B. Anthony and 15 other women were arrested for trying to vote, they did not try to work within the system, because it obviously wouldn’t let them.

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched with people of all races and backgrounds to fight for civil rights and economic justice, he was not following the prescribed advice of society. He was called a criminal and a troublemaker and labeled a terrorist by the FBI.

The list could go on from Rosa Parks to Eugene Debs to Julian Assange.

My point here is that most of us know we need change, but we’ve been convinced by those who control our two ruling parties that we must work within the system, and that voting third party is absurd because it has no chance of accomplishing anything.

This dichotomy of right and left has turned us against one another and utilized fear-driven tactics to herd people into voting for politicians who promise them everything and then sell them out to corporations and their special interests. The mental and physical energy of the movements for change find themselves divested in party politics where the status quo says one thing and does another.

Time and time again we keep bashing our heads off of the same two-party wall, and every time a third party comes up they are demonized and slandered. Voters buy into the pragmatism of staying within the confines of their respective parties because they have been conditioned to believe that anything else is a foolish waste of time.

When it becomes clear that you don’t matter to those in power and all your efforts for change are being undermined by political operatives working for the leadership of your parties, it’s time to step back and reassess the validity of bashing third-party politics.

Obeying the mandate to only vote blue or red is not making college affordable. It’s not ending the constant drum beat of perpetual warfare. It’s not ending the corruption and robbery of political and economic institutions against the people.

You aren’t being listened to.

This is where the individual choice of becoming the change you want to see becomes the only viable option if you really want to save our planet and our children. Waiting on the sidelines for a poll is what two-faced politicians do.

That’s not how democracy is supposed to work. They’ve taken their game and made it yours, and in the process turned you into intellectual cover to continue their crimes against the people relatively unabated.

This isn’t an easy thing I am telling you to do, but as Dr. King once said, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” This two-party oligarchy, and, yes, that’s what it actually is, has betrayed you, and with my voice and my vote, I will no longer be silent. Will you?

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