zohran's win isn't worth celebrating

Not in those words, exactly. But “elections are just a distraction” is a direct quote, preceded closely by “I remember the celebration when Obama was elected”. And closely again was a conspicuous pause at the word “city”, about twenty-four hours after results came out. Feels safe to assume.

Tabling the absurdity of comparing Mamdani to Obama, this in general is a conversation I am bone tired of having in leftist spaces. To be fair, I understand where they’re coming from. Elections are not revolutionary. Something something, if voting made a difference they wouldn’t let you do it. And there is absolutely value in recognizing the fault of the two-party system and in calling out the undemocratic nature of a marketed democracy. But the idea that every single action must be immediately insurrectionist is bullshit. Here’s my why.

1. change takes a while. there are people to think of in the meantime.

Movements take time, and not in the way some pedestal academics use it to justify inaction. Movements, factually, take time. Rome wasn’t built in a day? Didn’t fall in one either. The Haitian Revolution was thirteen years from the first Bois Caiman meeting to declaration of statehood, which doesn’t even count the building of consciousness that led up to that first meeting. South African apartheid lasted forty years from implementation to Mandela’s release despite immediate backlash. The Serbian Revolution was more than three decades. Change takes time.

And in that time there are people. Let’s say the world stopped a year from now, the same suddenness with which this romanticized, supposedly-overnight revolution comes. What we do in that year would not be made irrelevant simply because of this ending. One more hungry person reached by mutual aid is a world impacted. One more funded public library is a world impacted. One more trans kid with access to healthcare is a world impacted. Yes, social justice isn’t true justice until systemic justice is secured. But progress counts for people. This world will hurt regardless. Let us at least try to help it hurt in less places.

2. it’s about picking the weaker enemy to fight.

The place I’ve seen this elections-are-bullshit rhetoric the most was during the 2024 presidential election. It wasn’t valid there, either.

Yes, they were both genocidal warmongering capitalists. But one genocidal warmongering capitalist would have needed to at least appear pro-climate, appear pro-immigrant, appear pro-queer. That accountability, however performative, means something. Getting tired of picking the lesser of two evils doesn’t mean we should stop. Elections should not be our sole focus for societal change, but they are a chance to pick which enemy we fight. There’s a murderous man on a path we have to walk through, but we can take actionable steps to ensure he has a knife instead of a rifle. (One of them is going to win. We will have to fight that person. We can at least try to make sure they don’t go after immigrants or trans people or people of color simultaneously when they go after poor people and the global south.)

bringing it back

Paola Rojas, at a panel earlier this year, emphasized the value of working three angles at once as a movement. In order to be successful in an abolitionist capacity, she teaches , we must work against, within, and beyond the state. All three. At once. Elections should be a part of a part of the movement. They should combine with lobbying efforts and court battles and a hundred other things to make up a fight within the system, a fight that should then exist alongside these two others. It is true that working within the system alone cannot save us. But to discredit the effort entirely is to be ignorant of our reality and the care our people deserve. So celebrate Zohran Mamdani. Celebrate a win, even if it is only for a part of a part of the effort.