For Your Enjoyment: “Not Voting” by Bill Mohr
Super Tuesday is coming up, so in the spirit of the occasion, here’s a poem written in the last week of October, 1980 by Los Angeles poet Bill Mohr.
Not Voting
Bill Mohr
Not voting is realizing that the important things
don’t get voted on. You don’t vote on who gets to carry
a gun in your neighborhood. You don’t vote on who gets to
teach your children. You don’t vote on who makes decisions
about zoning property. You don’t even vote on who arranges
bus and train schedules. So what’s the big fucking privilege
in voting for the person who has nuclear warheads
at his disposal. I don’t vote on who’s the official coroner.
I’m not angry. If I were,
I’d vote. You can’t bait me
by making my vote itself
appear to be the lesser of two evils.
The politicians insist that not voting
proves you are no better than a convicted arsonist,
who’s serving time with a pimp who murdered his mother,
with a rapist who melted down the wedding rings of
his victims, with a mail fraud artist who specializes
in insurance policies for inmates at old age homes.
Not voting is refusing to memorize
history: Alexander the Great defeated the Persians
at Issus. He then marched to the Indus,
and died. Gaul, North Africa, Carthage, Rome,
the cities fallen, barbarians, exile and return,
Valley Forge, Verdun, victory,
Pearl Harbor, the Camps. Not voting is altering
the course of history, while voting changes it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m for voting.
I want to vote on who gets drafted.
I want to vote on who gets killed in
friendly fire, hostile fire, fever.
I want to vote on who dies in the womb and who escapes.
I want to vote on the dead, on who gets brought
back to life, who gets to stay dead and famous,
and who, among the billions, gets to stay quite simply dead.
I want to vote on who gets to assassinate the next tyrant of ….
I think of assassins, the ones who are lucky,
Judith, dreaming of a sword, and the ones who weren’t, whose bomb
missed Hitler by seconds; Assassination and language.
In 1968, Eldridge Cleaver, standing in front
of 6,000 students, could chant
Fuck Ronald Reagan, and call him a motherfucker.
Frisson. The Lenny Bruce of politics.
But Cleaver knew better than to say Kill Ronald Reagan.
You can’t threaten a public official,
even in a poem. So when I say I want to vote
on who gets to assassinate the next tyrant of ….
I leave the country blank, because I don’t want to go to jail.
If I’m in jail, I don’t get to vote.
February 8th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
On Tuesday, February 5, 2008, Bill Mohr voted for Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, and he hopes to vote for him again in November, 2008, in an election that will award him the toughest job in the United States. I urge my fellow citizens not to allow the idiocy we have been subjected to the past eight years to deter us from demanding change, not only in our leadership, but in ourselves. If anyone things that electing Senator Obama to the presidency is sufficient commitment as a citizen, then they might as well not vote. It is up to us to stay organized, and to keep the pressure on all of our elected officials in order to achieve social justice. No matter who is elected, our work will not end with his or her inauguration; the same vigilance we will need to give to counting the votes in November, 2008 must be transformed into the careful scrutiny of everything our leaders propose. — Bill Mohr, Long Beach, February 8, 2008
February 9th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Hear, hear!