When my partner and I decided to become a one-car family in 2016, I began to use Uber when I wasn’t able to walk or bike. Until this happened in 2017:

As news of Donald Trump’s travel ban on Muslim-majority countries spread, protests sprang up at airports around the US. In support, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance called on its members to avoid J[FK]…After the strike, Uber tweeted that surge pricing, which results in higher fares at busy times, had been switched off near JFK…The reaction to Uber’s strikebreaking was swift. #DeleteUber began trending…

What? Uber was undermining the protests against Tr*mp’s Muslim ban? I deleted my account.

But in 2018, I traveled to Puerto Rico to research my fourth Justice Hustlers feminist heist book SIDE CHICK NATION. It was the first novel published about Hurricane Maria, and it took on issues of colonization and climate change. Lyft doesn’t operate in PR. I reinstated my Uber account. Just to get around in San Juan. Then I deleted it again.

This past weekend, I wanted to tune in to the Democratic National Convention. Although I consider the Democratic Party to be a deeply problematic institution, I wanted to see what they would have to say for themselves at this critical moment. But as a primary parent operating in a global pandemic, shut inside with unbreathable Northern California air, I spent most evenings of the convention parenting. I didn’t want my young kid to see anything too graphic or frightening, and I know that our current political situation is just that. The DNC didn’t have a clear schedule to tune in to see my faves.

We caught the end of Bernie Sanders’ speech, and all of Michelle Obama. We saw AOC the next day on social media. I am still looking for full-length speech videos to watch as a family, especially Warren and Sanders and a few others.

During the convention, my twitter feed was filled with astute commentary. Where was Julian Castro? Where were the Muslim elected officials? Why were the big-name speakers so overwhelmingly white? Why did AOC only get a single minute? How did Republicans end up getting more airtime than progressive Dems? Why was Bloomberg featured so prominently when he was such a failure as a candidate? All of these are totally legit questions. They point to the fact that the Democratic Party is deeply flawed. They are flawed around race, class, gender, war, and nationalism. But the Democratic Party is our ride share right now.

And we are trying to get somewhere. We wanted Sanders to take us there. We wanted Warren to take us there. We wanted Castro to take us there. None of them got the job at the ride share company. Joe Biden did. Many of us don’t like how the primaries went down, but as Michelle Obama said, “it is what it is.”

I am on the record with many criticisms of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I am on the record supporting Sanders and Warren. But I am also on the record time after time, saying that our elected officials will not save us.

Mervyn Marcano of Blackbird put it like this on twitter:

“In this election, I am not voting for someone I’m ideologically aligned with. I’m voting for a favorable organizing target. For better terrain on which to build movements that contend for power. If that’s not for you, respect. But if it can be, tap in.”

Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Movement for Black Lives, who coined the term “Black Lives Matter” tweeted this:

“I’m voting Biden/Harris. I’m voting down the ticket. I’m registering and moving others to vote. And I’m going to keep pushing them.”

Or as Black climate activist Mary Annaïse Heglar put it: “Just vote. You don’t have to be crunk about it.”

This is how I framed my appeal to vote Democrat in 2016 in Bitch Magazine:

The Democrats won’t get us to where we’re going, but they won’t be taking us into a dystopic future of social, economic and ecological disaster….the president and the government in general aren’t going to transform this country into a state of peace and justice. WE are gonna change this country into a state of peace and justice. The party in the White House has the power to help or harm us or just leave us alone.

The Democrats will mostly stay out of our way. The Republicans will do everything in their power to crush our movements, and will create a ton of oppressive and violent crises, nationally and internationally, that will suck up our energy. Their collateral damage alone will collectively traumatize us and brutalize our communities and our world….Politicians don’t act with integrity because it flows from within them. They act with integrity because our movements demand it of them, and have the power to force their hand.

I don’t expect perfect integrity from the Democratic machine. National politics is a very dirty fight. The Republicans fight dirty in open and explicit ways….the DNC is shady, and interested in maintaining power. Bernie represented an attempted takeover of the Democratic Party from the left, and insiders weren’t gonna let that happen…It takes a LOT of power and momentum to take over a political machine–much more than popular votes. It takes a consolidation of power over time, and Bernie’s Revolution didn’t have it yet.

But we can’t let any of this convince us to give up our voting power to block Trump.

I stand by this, and I will also quote Jessica Byrd, the queer Black feminist political operative I interviewed for Bitch Magazine shortly after the election:

I’m working with a lot of young, Black, radical organizations on voter mobilization. We got a lot of push back [in encouraging people to vote in the presidential election, because folks weren’t excited about their options and were more committed to focusing on community organizing]. One thing that really resonated with a lot of the organizations that I work with was a voter mobilization message that prioritized their organizing, as opposed to a democratic candidate win being an end in itself. One of the best messaging tools was to say “we are voting for the conditions at which we want to be organizing.” With Trump’s election now we have these horrific really uphill organizing conditions.

I have continuously pushed this in young Black spaces [like the Movement for Black Lives], to have electoral politics as a part of our toolkit. Do you really want a toolbox that doesn’t have a hammer? Voting is the hammer. It’s not everything. It’s not our north star. It’s not liberation. It’s not a definition of our success. But it does provide us with an additional tool to move towards what success looks like. …[D]emocracy is not a vision that has been fully fulfilled [and it] doesn’t quite meet what our people deserve yet….[For Black people, there’s] this deep, intense responsibility to voting. It is historied and weighted and these stories and this narrative around “your ancestors died for this” comes from this deeply emotional place. And people get angry. They’re so mad. And I think that that’s valid. I also think there’s this valid rejection of the idea that voting should not ever feel like a privilege. [Instead] it should be this automatic, very easy system. And the fact that it isn’t, means that it’s never the voter’s fault. That there’s a displaced blame. That’s valid too. Then how do we remedy the fact that the system is broken, [while acknowledging] we also have a responsibility at the same time. [bold emphasis mine]

That was 2016. In 2020, we have Tr*mp in power doing everything to suppress our votes, including destroying the postal service to sabotage vote-by-mail. He is leveraging the pandemic to create chaos and corruption. There is no question that he would lose a fair election, so we won’t be having one. Only a landslide for Biden will get us past the many, massive obstacles that Tr*mp is creating to install himself as a dictator. The Movement for Black Lives only has three top demands, and one is to remove Donald Tr*mp. Yes, all the criticisms of the Democratic Party are valid. But November is coming up quick. The climate emergency is escalating. The economy is collapsing. We need to defund police. We need a Green New Deal. We need to get out of this pandemic. Where the hell is that Uber??

Joe Biden can be my Uber driver. Kamala Harris can ride shotgun. I don’t trust the ride share app to find the best route, but I can holler encouraging directions from the back seat. I’m putting in the address right now. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is just a stop we’ll be making. The ultimate destination is a society and world economy that works for the good of the people. I don’t have that exact address yet. Just drive toward the White House. Watch out for obstacles, Joe. I’ll have that final address by the time we get there. Hold tight. I’m looking it up right now on my phone.