Post #4118248

Look, I write letters to politicians (who I didn't vote for, btw, i voted for a communist this last time I think. i find that more fun that telling strangers I think voting doesn't matter even if it's just as "effective") for a few reasons. NOT because I have a serious expectation they will derail their whole political career just to save the planet (like, who expects that? This isn't a hollywood movie and only arnold was ever an action hero AND a (cruel) politician, so it's unlikely). I do it because what history I've learned of humanitarian mass crimes (like genocide and ecocide) tells me is one of the first excuses perpetrators and people complicit in mass harm will fall to when called to account is "we didn't know" and we depend on the thousands and millions of unrecognized survivors, chroniclers, and archivists to establish the perpetrators of mass harm DID know. I write a letter to the person who votes whether to give MORE money or LESS money to the billionaires and militaries and police industrial complex so there is one more letter telling the future this member of parliament, this city councillor, these people knew. As people die from climate disaster and genocides partly funded with tax dollars and sanctioned fundraisers and tax cuts to oil companies and profiting from land dispossession, I can't stop any of that but I can write to the person who, on paper, is supposed to represent me so in the future they can't ever say they didn't know or had no idea. People will have told them. That's one reason I write these useless letters, if anyone wants to know.