Image: Lauren Gadson

It is day number 35 of social distancing for me. The COVID-19 outbreak currently has the world under a shared self-quarantine. Everyone is having their battles with a diverse spectrum of emotions. The past two weeks were the most difficult for many reasons. Personally, I’ve learned about two deaths of people close to me enough to hurt. I was already in a state of grief due to the abnormal reality of living during a pandemic, so this grief in the face of loss of life combined for a much more potent mix of pain. Added to my working from home for the 4th week straight. I miss interacting with my students. I grieve a little more. This all swells when doused with the grounding feeling of the inability to help anyone who may need it the most. The reality of safety during a pandemic is to practice isolation during its rise and fall. This concoction of emotions has guided me through my stages of grief. This week came the 3rd and 4th stages of anger and depression respectively.

Keeping my personal and political lives separate is extremely difficult. The political molds the personal whether you participate or not. A pandemic only brings about the foundational fissures to a state where it is hemorrhaging of all the inequalities and injustices that our political realities exist in. Simply stated: we feel injustice much more viscerally. So, as I am managing my personal losses and grieving through them, on last week my political life took a loss as well. Senator Bernie Sanders decided to suspend his campaign and the media has now moved on to name former Vice President Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee for this November’s presidential election. That was when the 3rd stage of grief then arrived. Anger.

Maybe it is the fact that most predictions saw Sen. Sanders falling behind in delegates and closer to losing the race, at least according to the media. The real life-threatening danger of voting during a pandemic is another great reason to suspend a campaign. The Democratic party didn’t seem too interested in postponing upcoming primary election dates. Or maybe it is my 33 years of age that I can attribute my current form of anger, with my political experience also guiding its rage. But the combination of these qualities and conditions have left out the shock and surprise factor and allowed me to possess a contained anger that allowed me to burn through the depression stage into the 5th “upward turn” stage of grief. That’s not to say I haven’t felt the waves of depression hit me. I’ve had to sit still through those moments. I just refuse to sit still for too long and remain quiet in the face of political and social catastrophe. I began to speak a little louder on social media regarding the fallout of Sen. Sanders’ suspending his campaign.

I decided to share my decision that I will not be voting for Biden unless he adopts a fully progressive agenda. I also stated my political opinion that I believe the younger Millennial and Gen-Z voters will not turnout for Biden. The backlash I received was fast. Questions and doubts about my political relevancy were brought up. Most of all, I was asked a repeatedly: “Why did you run as a Democrat?” The memory of my 2020 congressional campaign only had one full week to exist before “Coronavirus” became all we know. So, my time to reflect on the campaign we spent over a year working on had not been given its chance to breathe. I didn’t have time to breathe. The adjustment of work and personal life needs immediately took all of my attention. But I’ve had the time to reflect on our current state and I can now answer that question moving forward.

The time to reflect that I’ve had during the 3-day Easter weekend has helped me put together the understanding and articulation of my political identity. This is the 6th stage of grief: Reconstruction & Working Through. For me, in order to rebuild I must look at the pieces of my political foundation. I must take those pieces and adjust them to the last six years of my political activism and community organizing. I must match them with my lived political experience as both person and organizer. This process requires an answer and I am here to see it through. My political identity begins in New York.

The Road Towards a Political Identity

I turned eighteen years old in August of 2004. At the time I was still living in Elmont, New York. That November I headed to my local fire station and got in line to vote for the first time ever. I voted for John Kerry. I had spent the previous three years watching the news closely as I would witness the World Trade Center collapse on t.v. and usher in the War on Terror era. I would come to despise the President of the United States, George W. Bush. I remember the moment I saw his dumbfounded face continue to sit in front of a classroom of elementary school children moments after being whispered the news of the confirmation of an attack on U.S. soil, I wondered why he was still sitting there. At fifteen years old, I would begin to question the leadership of this country.

I would fall into the rabbit hole of cable news politics and the late night satire of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. I would learn more about honesty in politics by finding refuge in comedy. After all, it was by watching a sketch on The Chappelle Show, where I would come to learn that Canada had free healthcare and that Dave Chappelle would solve the U.S. healthcare crisis by getting all of its citizen’s fake Canadian ID cards. At eighteen years old, I had become fully aware of the corrupt absurdity of politics and saw the republicans as the worst actors in our modern political theater.

I casted my vote for Kerry and watched the results later that evening as a still scared and panicked nation re-elected a war time president for their manufactured war on terror that would produce hundreds of thousands of deaths. Thousands of deaths of U.S. military service people, and countless deaths of innocent Iraqis and Afghans. All for the financial profits of the weapons manufacturers, contractors, and the rest of the vast military industrial complex. I saw the characteristics of a villainous empire in the hands of a republican run government. I needed hope.

By 2008 I had already moved to Houston, and I was all in for the fresh face and inspiring voice that was Barack H. Obama. FOX News’ hatred for Obama, coupled with living in the South allowed my then twenty-two-year-old mind to see the historical markings of racism and xenophobia that made-up the republican DNA. The historic win had me full of joy and a feeling of promise for a better future. I went back to enjoying my life and working, taking my eye off the ball as it began to bounce more and more in the republican’s favor. A 2010 midterm election would give republicans the majority in the House of Representatives. I wouldn’t participate in a midterm election for the first time until 2018. But still, I had plenty to learn. The fallout of the Recession began to hit home.

My Mother was a victim of the housing crisis that triggered the 2008 Recession. The reason we moved to Houston was because a group of real estate agents and brokers sold my parents on the purchase of a house, without explaining what the “variable rate” does to future mortgage payments. Like hundreds of thousands of Black and Brown minority home buyers, my parents were targeted by the deregulated housing market and its vulture practices. Congress bailed out the banks and my parents had to foreclose their home. The Obama administration would inherit a mess to fix, but it also participated fully in the practice of corporate socialism. My growing sense of questioning the democrats began to grow its thorns. Still though, I was mostly aiming my political daggers for the subversively white supremacist republican party.

Mainstream liberal media would keep me motivated to vote for the re-election of President Obama. The leaked audio of republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney revealing his comments claiming that “there are 47% of the people who will vote for the president (Obama) no matter what” because they seek “entitlements” would feed my disdain for the “grand old party,” characterizing them as the party of the elites. The democrats to me were still the party of the working class. I was twenty-six-years-old and still plugged into the game that is the two-party system. President Obama would win re-electing, but the republicans would win the majority in the Senate in 2014. This effectively left the Obama administration with a congress that would earn the distinction of owning the historic feat of becoming the most ineffective Congress of all time, but I would also like to note that they also hold the record for the wealthiest congress of all time. 2016 now loomed large in the horizon, both figuratively and personally.

The Obama administration was the last great democratic party offering that there was. The cultural icon status of President Obama would be enough to wash away all of the corporate neo-liberal sins from his hands. The best offering that is celebrated under his leadership would be the Affordable Care Act, or as it was originally known first, “RomneyCare” before it got the “ObamaCare” facelift. I entered the beginning stages of my political radicalization against the democratic party.

In 2014 my journey as an activist would begin. I would move around all of Houston participating in meetings, rallies, actions, and protests for three solid years. Including traveling around the country to connect with other activists. This journey took me through experiences that forever changed me. Most notably, the Winter of 2014 when we (Truth2Power) held a month-long protest after the “no indictment” verdict of Darren Wilson for the murder of Mike Brown. As well as the Summer of 2015 when we held a two-month-long vigil for Sandra Bland at Waller County jail. We took a break after that hot summer. We needed to reset before we could come back to the planning table with something we could do in Houston.

2016 saw us organize politically at the local level with the #ByeDevon and #RonGone campaigns. Which would help mobilize a historic turnout to vote in Harris County. We voted out Republican District Attorney Devon Anderson and Sheriff Ron Hickman. This feat was accomplished during a presidential election that saw a 20 year low turnout nationally. We didn’t let all our races be a loss. Those social justice centered campaigns started the highly reported 2018 “Texas Blue Wave,” and then its core grassroots organizers were discarded by the local establishment as soon as the dust settled. The presidential election loss was another story.

I only held the small speck of hope for a possible 2016 candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders or Senator Elizabeth Warren. The former would take that speck of hope and multiply it by the hundreds of thousands of people that would come out to his rallies. Dwarfing the small high school gym crowd turnouts for Hillary Clinton. But unlike all of my other seasons between elections, it would be my time as an activist and organizer that would begin to amplify what personal motives would affect my political radicalization. From 2014 through 2016 my political identity began to find its shape and break away the democratic loyalist mindset.

Not everyone knows about what happened during the 2016 democratic primary election. The Democratic National Committee would trigger the superdelegate rule and steal the nomination from Sen. Sanders. An act that silenced hundreds of thousands of voters who turned out to vote for Sanders, giving him the majority in states that the superdelegate party insiders would snatch for Clinton at the convention in Philadelphia. The concept of democracy had ceased to exist. The name of the “democratic” party now rang hollow, and it rang like a church bell mourning the death of democracy all the way to November 2016. That bell was a warning, and yet nothing was learned in 2016 as we head into our current 2020 presidential election.

I am a Socio-Abolitionist

These past three years under a Trump administration have been stressful. A combination of more localized politics and personal reasons made my political identity seek for spaces where it can exist. 2017 saw Trump take office as I ended my time at Texas Southern University, graduating in May. I also began the process of my divorce from a ten-year marriage. I moved into Third Ward and began collaborating with incredibly talented people. This was a creative escape from the local political organizing which fell apart from the compromises between local non-profits, activists, and democrats. Giving up the power that the local social justice coalition had gained through the local 2016 election season wins in which we all participated in. In Houston, we headed into the last third of 2017 recovering from Hurricane Harvey. A recovery which is still needed today during a pandemic for so many Black and Brown communities.

In 2018 I participated in Harvey recovery efforts with the same core group of organizers that I call my Family (Truth2Power). I was also hired to be a teacher and start my first year as an educator that Fall. But I couldn’t sit still. I needed to find a way to continue to be a political activist and organize something that can have impact. In January of 2019 I decided to run for congress on the most progressive agenda in Houston. The grassroots effort matched my morals, ethics, and ideals as an organizer, and we were successful. The incumbent Representative Sheila Jackson Lee moved a tad bit left and signed on to the Green New Deal and defended her “progressive” record with her support of Medicare for All. We didn’t win, but we did what activists strive to do, which is to push the elected officials towards social justice more and more with every effort. I ran as a democrat to push the party towards a more progressive agenda locally, and we did that. Now I must answer the question: How do I identify politically? Because one thing is for sure, I am not a democrat.

I have not been sitting here grieving the loss of Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign. He has the status and support to be ok. I am grieving the loss of our progressive agenda that would help millions of people who do not have the status nor support to be ok. An agenda that right now during a pandemic we desperately need to make it through without major economic or personal loss. When universal healthcare is what we need, with Medicare for All as the overwhelmingly popular policy in the country going into this election cycle, we have Joe Biden proposing universal healthcare coverage for COVID-19 treatment only and lowering the Medicare age requirement from 65 to 60. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton proposed to lower it to 55 without a current pandemic to push her 5 years lower than the former vice-president’s current offering. I cannot vote for Joe Biden.

My time organizing was centered around social justice. The time I spent learning from wiser minds about the intersections of politics and the personal within that social justice frame is what motivates me today. It was what helped Harris County begin to lead the way to a possible “Blue Texas.” It was the foundation to my congressional campaign. My political identity will always call out for social justice, and my experience in political organizing has taught me that compromise will only lead me to stay in an abusive relationship with a party run by elites. It is those elites who I am rejecting, the same wealthy group Biden promised that nothing would “fundamentally change.” I do want change. Greater change than President Obama ever tried alluding to. What I see before us is a need to abolish, among many things, the corporate government that we have.

The Abolitionist Movement from the 19th century was born out of the resistance to the American slave system. Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, and John Brown were abolitionists. They are the original American social justice organizers. But slavery didn’t end. It only evolved into a 13th amendment protected mass incarceration system. Our targets for abolition have evolved into that prison system, along with the corporate socialism that exists in our healthcare, housing, education and nutrition. Deregulated capitalism has made all of our human rights into commodities. We must reclaim them and abolish our oppressive corporate-tied-government along with it.

I believe that housing is a human right. That utilities which include electricity, water, gas, and the internet are human rights. Education and healthy nutrition are human rights. Socialist programs need to exist to meet these human rights needs. We see this lack more than ever during this COVID-19 pandemic. We must recognize this moment as proof that we are not safe as a society if our human rights are attached to bottom line profit margins of the elite wealthy class. This is why the progressive agenda means so much to me. Why I ran on it, and why I supported Sen. Sanders’ presidential run. My political identity refuses to align with anybody whose morals, ethics, and ideals are not aligned with mine as a Socio-Abolitionist.

The political identity of Socio-Abolitionist isn’t known in mainstream political talks, nor is it classified anywhere. It is an identity that I have carved out of my years of political awareness and participation. Blended with my education and experience as a social justice activist. I fight for socialists programs that meet the needs of the people, their human rights. I fight for the abolition of the oppressive systems that have been placed by imperialism, vulture capitalism, and white supremacy. I believe in socialism for the people, and abolition for the system. This made me recognize myself as existing in a political spectrum that is much too wide for a 2-party system. I don’t desire to belong to one singular side or political group. I believe in coalition building. This places me in the group that the Democrats will always court with less than half measures of progressive talking points, but throw the full blame on for future losses. The Independent Voter.

The 41%

Five months ago, in December of 2019 a Gallup poll was conducted and it revealed that 28% of voters identify as democrat, another 28% identify as republican, and 41% identify as an Independent. Even though I have participated in four presidential elections, voting democrat every time, I had stopped identifying as a democrat after three cycles. I had become an Independent voter and was voting for the candidate who closely stood with my morals, ethics, and ideals. For this current presidential election cycle, during the next six months, the democratic party will be expected to court enough independent voters to get the electoral majority needed to win the White House. I see them more focused on that white-male blue-collar worker from the states democrats didn’t expect to lose in 2016. That strategy and agenda doesn’t center social justice and it never will.

This current democratic party has shown me an unwillingness to align with my social justice principles. Senator Sanders has identified himself as an Independent for his congressional and senate career. His campaign was the closest to that social justice agenda I look for. I realized his campaign was the first real opportunity I had to show that I no longer was supporting the establishment democratic party loyalist candidate. I wrote in “Bernie” in November 2016 because I refused to vote for Clinton. Before anybody gets up in arms about me “throwing away my vote,” it is important to note that Clinton was never going to win Texas. The comedy that is electoral college would have her lose the election with a 3 million plus popular vote majority. I would see the national level election as an opportunity to defend my political and moral positions. An opportunity to help that 41% voice grow louder in the face of complacency.

True Democracy cannot exist within a 2-party monopolized system. Where two singular voices and ideologies funded by corporate elites are the only voices in the room. The reality of a multi-party system may not be possible to have in the United States, at least not how most people understand such multi-party system to be in other countries, but it can exist within the spaces where we should exert progressive influence. The grassroots organizing for social justice centered campaigns, the primary process of nominee selections, and the media spaces that speak from outside the two dominant political ideological bubbles. All three of these spaces have room for us to disrupt the 2-party system and bring about our progressive agenda towards the front. To do that we must hold our ground and force the establishment to compromise to our terms, and not the other way around. The democratic party must negotiate with us for our votes in November, because in a True Democracy, your choice is your vote. My political identity will defend its choice every time.

A large part of my political organizing and activism was focused on ringing the alarm to local democrats regarding the growing threat of the tea party movement. A movement which empowered and unleashed white supremacy terrorism and right wing extremism. I would watch those local democrats sit on their hands as the tea party morphed in to the alt-right movement and became mainstream. I realize now that I must focus on the democrats more than before. I understand what Trump represents and how dangerous his administration is, but I also understand how the establishment democrats have allowed spaces for white supremacists and right wing extremists to exist comfortably through out my lifetime. I’m not done battling with racist republicans. I’m just done holding democrats accountable with only voting strategies and campaigns. Moving forward, I am fighting everybody in both parties. I’m done repeating the same cycle and expecting different results. What comes next requires a new set of game plans.

Still Forward

The 7th and final stage of grief is Acceptance & Hope. I have to leave you with a sense of hope in the face of this stress and anxiety inducing pandemic reality. I do it for myself just as much as I do it for my family and the communities that I have organized and advocated for. I have accepted that the political establishment did it again and stole another primary from the people. The announcement of both Sen. Sanders and former President Obama endorsing Joe Biden was expected, and so I have accepted that the establishment is still in full control of its parties, both republican and democrat. But it is the democrats who are the ones that still play at being the party of decency and progressive values. So that’s the party we attack.

The sense of hope follows when you realize your power. What the establishment despises the most is when they don’t see us fall in line. When they see us stand up and hold steady for our morals, ethics, and ideals. I know what we are capable of, because I have seen it up close. The local level of political organizing gives us power. Political leverage comes when you do not compromise. We have six months until November. That means Joe Biden and the establishment have six months to come back with something meaningful for Medicare for All, Student Loan Forgiveness, and a Green New Deal. If they truly want to win, they will come to our table and negotiate. In the meantime we must continue to build that progressive table. That’s what they fear the most.

The 41% of voters who could swing any election, if they choose to participate, consists of more than just an Independent label. The ideological differences that exist among this group are as diverse as the multi-party system that some wish we had. We can build that model as we head into a future that holds plenty of uncertainty for everyone in the world right now, as COVID-19 continues to spread. But one thing that is certain is that the democratic party doesn’t value our vote and doesn’t want to fight for our human rights. So this is my declaration as an independent voter who identifies as a Socio-Abolitionist. I hope to learn about other political identities as more voters walk away from the 2-party mindset and begin to speak fully for themselves. This is a rallying call for all of you to stand your ground and engage in political discourse. Meaningful political discourse that is too complex for social media posts and comment boxes. Build coalitions and fight for one another’s human rights. If anything, that will be my last remaining political hope.

I close with my reflection that grieving looks different for everybody. I have processed heavy emotions and frustrations in both personal and political spaces of my life. I have arrived at the understanding that what I will be saying moving forward about our political system and both parties won’t be popular, but it will need to be said. Abolition is righteous. History has taught me that. Social Justice is all I want, and I’m not here to be popular. And that is okay. My loved ones love me.

Peace.