PHOTO: Election Boycott actions in Austin, Texas and Charlotte, North Carolina

By Jakob Stein

On this ‘Super Tuesday,’ revolutionaries in Austin, Texas and Charlotte, North Carolina carried out several actions in support of the ongoing election boycott campaign. The campaign is aimed at transforming the already existing large-scale voter abstention into an active movement for revolution by steering the masses away from the dead-end of electoral politics.

Election Boycott Propaganda in Charlotte Election Boycott Propaganda in Charlotte Slashed and Painted election signs in Austin

In Charlotte, several campaign signs in front of polling locations were covered in hammer and sickles as well as revolutionary slogans supporting the election boycott such as “Don’t Vote! Fight for Revolution!” Incendiary also received a photograph of graffiti in Charlotte reading, “Elections No! Revolution Yes!”

In Austin, there has been a wide campaign against roadside election signs, with many being targeted with graffiti and others slashed in half or otherwise destroyed. Elsewhere in the city, Heidi Sloan, member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) running for the Democratic nomination for US House of Representatives, was targeted with dozens of her own campaign signs, covered in hammer and sickles and large X’s, placed in her yard.

Super Tuesday is the largest single day for primary elections, with 14 states holding primaries or caucuses to nominate each party’s respective candidate for the 2020 presidential election. Today is extremely important for the two frontrunners in the tightening race between former Vice-President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, as approximately one-third of the total delegates are up for grabs.

The Democratic Party itself is going through an identity crisis, with two major factions battling each other over the best way to prop up US imperialism and bring it into a new generation as it faces continued and deepening crisis.

The party elite have closed ranks around Biden over the past few days, with several former candidates including Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, and Pete Buttigieg endorsing him last night at a campaign rally in Dallas. Candidates that had previously railed against Biden in numerous debates are now cozying up to him in a bid to secure their own futures within the party. Biden represents the longstanding Democratic establishment, who seek to fortify support for US imperialism and the reactionary state with watered-down ‘inclusivity’ rhetoric, relatively meager government spending in comparison to the total expenditures of the US state, and partnerships with private capital.

On the other hand, the so-called ‘progressive’ wing of the party represented by Sanders have sought to co-opt vaguely revolutionary slogans and the name of Socialism to restore the masses’ dwindling faith in capitalism and bourgeois elections. While his supporters often paint themselves as enemies of the status-quo and the richest ‘one percent,’ their movement is is little more than a facelift for the dying Democrat Party, importing policies that would be considered moderate to even European Social Democrats (themselves bourgeois agents) and rebranding it as ‘Democratic Socialism.’