We all deserve so much better

On Graham Platner, but not just Graham Platner

When I criticized Graham Platner a month ago, I promptly heard from a number of people, but especially women in Maine who shared my politics but not my opinion of their Senate candidate. Some of them just told me to get bent. But many others were gracious enough to talk with me about why they still stood by that particular man, even if I had upset them.

We talked, and they gave voice to commitments I share — the need to topple corrupt and unjust systems, the value in social movements welcoming us as imperfect humans, the hope that we can all grow together by working with our neighbors for an unrigged world.

Our exchanges didn’t change my opinion about the man— one forged not from any disagreement on policy, but from a long line of increasingly redder flags (the stint with Blackwater, the misogynistic Reddit posts, the affairs, the Nazi tattoo, the domestic violence accusation). But nor did I leave feeling righteous. I quietly hoped that my gut was off, that Platner was fully accountable to and honest with his community and that, this time at least, the power-seeking man would finally be worthy of defense.

I wanted that not for his sake, but for theirs.

When I heard the news about Jenny Racicot’s accusation, my heart shattered. First, of course, for Racicot herself, who has had to wrestle not only with her own trauma but with all the risks that come with speaking out against a load bearing famous man. And then, again, for Platner’s other accusers, including Lyndsey Fifield, whose story was disregarded by so many on the left because she doesn’t share our politics. Then one more time, for a nation of survivors who received another reminder that, when given the choice between protecting a man’s career and supporting women, it’s always a foregone conclusion.

I told my wife that this one was hitting me hard. She asked, in essence, why this particular story. A fair question, given that nothing about this pattern— a charismatic man cocooned from consequence— was new.

I thought about my conversations with those women in Maine, about how much they reminded me of the countless times I’ve witnessed wives, mothers and female colleagues asked to defend the worst behavior from men for the sake of a bigger cause. I thought about Dolores Huerta, and the ways that, even in movements for justice, women are callously tossed to the wolves but men are always too big to fail.

I also remember the many times my own fragile male ego has taken the wheel— not at the level of Platner’s, to be clear, but in the more prosaic manner familiar to any woman whose ever shared a workplace with men in love with the sound of our own voices.

To be a man, I’ve learned, is to have excuses made for you.

Patriarchy is one of the many terms that we’ve been scolded, on the left, for speaking out loud. We’ve been told that you can’t build a cross-class political movement with “buzzwords.” Too many syllables,I guess. How condescending, that line of thought, to assume that our neighbors aren’t worth being told the truth.

But there’s really no other word for it. Patriarchy, that violent and infantalizing lie. That wicked thief, robbing life from some, dignity from others, and full humanity from the people it purports to benefits.

This story was never about one man. It was always about what happens when we move out of fear rather than hope, when we our so worried about the alternative that we allow ourselves to be more enamored with a single savior than the potential of movements built together.

I don’t take any pride in being “right” about Platner, nor do I blame anybody in Maine for desiring a candidate who spoke to them. It’s not their fault that the candidate in question maintained a greater commitment to his own mythology than to his neighbors.

Liberation has and never will be a game of whack a mole, about finding and shaming a few bad dudes and calling it a day. It is and always will be about naming what we actually deserve.

We deserve political movements that don’t just spout off righteous ideals, but actually love people. All people, but especially those who current systems love the least.

We deserve communities with open, welcoming doors, but also the expectation that we’re all responsible for each other’s care and safety.

We deserve a politics of class solidarity rather than class fetishism, one that actually respects the full mosaic of working people, rather than falling for the one cool trick of elevating whichever white guy sounds most like a Super Bowl truck commercial.

We deserve full honesty about the patterns that keeps us stuck. Yes, it’s capitalism, but never in isolation. There have always been three horsemen riding together— the rapacious greed of capital, the affected blindness of white supremacy, and the unchecked aggression of patriarchy. To jettison the latter two as woke distractions is to lie about the way they all work together.

We deserve masculinity that isn’t so brittle that it feels the need to assert itself with a growl or an explosion.

We deserve boundless political imagination.

We deserve leaders that articulate both our rage and heartbreak but also our joy and collective potential.

We deserve politics that makes us feel more expansive, more hopeful, more trusting of each other.

We deserve more than just loud, charismatic voices who can shout the right thing into a microphone. We deserve potlucks and dance parties and childcare collectives and shoulders to cry on.

A better world is still possible. And I fully believe we’re building it. But not if we accept anything less than we deserve. Not just in some gauzy future, but right now. With each other. And for each other.

End notes:

1. This is an essay about all of us, not strictly about what the Democratic Party of Maine should do next. As of this writing it sounds like, if Platner drops out, there are still options. Personally, I hope that road leads to a different candidate, but one who shares the political commitments that made so many Mainers feel seen and heard. Beyond that, I hope there’s a lesson here for all of us, wherever we live. I do believe in growth, transformation and reparations.

2. As with most of my pieces, this is an essay about prefigurative politics, about not just demanding a different worlds, but treating each other now in the manner we hope will be true when we all get free. That’s why I’m hosting the Interdependence Relay, to celebrate people in all fifty states doing exactly that.

   1. This past weekend, we had an immensely rad Trans Movie Club event in Salt Lake City. This coming weekend, if you’re in or near Santa Fe, New Mexico, you’re invited to come cook mutual aid breakfast burritos with the crew of the SF Burrito Brigade. 3:00 PM Saturday, July 11th at the Commons (2300 W Alameda St).

   2. We’ll be announcing our Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Iowa host soon. Keep checking back to find out all our officially announced events.

   3. We’re currently reading applications for hosts in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio (deadline July 31st). Apply here!

3. I recognize the irony of including, at the end of this particular piece, my typical pitch to support a white guy who has opinions on the Internet (me) but I’m doing my best to make all this work— the writing and the organizing— not be about my own self aggrandizement but the broader project of us building, together. If it’s helped you, and you want to see this space continue, I’d appreciate the help a lot and don’t take it for granted (which is also why I’m generous with thank you gifts).