I’ve been actively at odds with Democrats since 2015—despite many seasons since, of bending over and taking exactly what they tell me to, exactly how they tell me to, without lube most days; always chasing after the dangling carrot of human dignity they promise, promise, promise but never actually hand over.

My beef today, as usual, is directed toward White Democrats specifically.

It frustrates me beyond words that the Dems, as a Party and often as a voting people, have doubled down on force-feeding us White supremacist, divisive candidates with colonization-focused policies, far more often than not, for my whole life. Even with 2008 Obama—who touched every nerve and inspired us profoundly—they still coached him to “tone it down,” play along, make a comedy show of having an anger interpreter for all the White liberals to laugh about, and do all the things expected (by White supremacy) of the First Black President. To “get along” with a Republican Party that clearly has shown no regard for getting along with the U.S. People, Democratic Party leadership reined Obama in— in the exact opposite direction from where we, the voters, clearly said we were ready for him to lead us. That rein-pulling drove a lot of people to perceive him as insincere and untrustworthy (which I personally don’t think was his fault).

Now, this past year—after two miserably unappealing White presidential candidates since Obama—the Dems throw Kamala Harris in at the 11th hour, as if she’s singularly responsible for cleaning up decades of mess in 100 days and salvaging some magical outcome from the Dems’ immature, overbearing, un-listening, well-constructed shit show?

Glass cliff, anyone?

They’re still using her face and name, like she’s our leader. “She” (her comms team, I assume) sent me an email this very week asking for money.

I have not received even one email from the Harris campaign reminding me that democracy is at stake and to attend my local quorum court or city council meeting. Nothing during her campaign suggesting I volunteer with my local food bank, or how to help a homeless veteran. Nothing constructive from Democrat leaders about how to actually resist and build sustainable community, now that we are in this mess.

Not. One. Email.
Not about anything but sending them more money I don’t have—because I’m now unemployed, thanks to the Dem leaders’ willful ineptitude and overreliance on colonizer principles to maintain their personal privileges at the expense of actual collective liberation goals, while anti-trans Republicans took my job and human rights away and all the Dems did about it was shrug. (Or actively agree with the literal Nazis.)

White women Democrats sat around wearing pink as their “protest,” and doing not one damn thing in solidarity as Al Green was forcibly removed from the House for showing the backbone the rest of the party lacks. No resistance. Nothing.

And now—may God bless him and all his loved ones in perpetuity—Cory Booker spends a whole day putting his body on the line to do, as one individual person, what the Party as a whole ought to have been doing collectively this whole time?

Do y’all know how profound the causal relationship is between sleep deprivation, heart attacks, and early death?

Booker didn’t just give us 25 hours and 4 minutes of his life. He gave us years off his life for this. Years with his grandchildren. Years with his spouse—all cut premature for one majestic, blazing, glorious day in which he fought to save us from the natural outcomes of his own team’s—from our— demonstrated commitments to White supremacy which stand in stark conflict with the Democrats’ stated values… and how those choices gave way for the other team’s commitments to White supremacy to prevail (because it is aligned with their stated values and thus does not cause cognitive dissonance).

I am grateful for Senator Booker’s service. I truly, truly am. Like any hero who sacrifices his health and well-being for our collective good, I respect and appreciate him.

But the fact that he is enduring such a MASSIVE lift that should not be his alone to bear?

That we all have a part to play in saving ourselves and democracy? Not expecting Black folks to both take the brunt of the struggle and be our saviors from it?

That Democratic candidates can only win ever again IF the rest of their party stops playing colonizer games and gets real about what’s at stake?

That Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden added weight to that lift, rather than helped ease it off Booker’s shoulders?

(Imagine if Biden had pushed for a 10% cap on all credit card and loan interest, instead of focusing on student loan debt? But that would have brought poor, education-deprived folks of all races together for a common, shared cause, wouldn’t it? And where is the profit, if the racism that has held us in tension for 400 years, to the benefit of both parties, actually gets dismantled instead of just talking about the need to dismantle it? Credit cards used to be capped at 10% until the 1960‘s. It’s not beyond imagination, nor without legal precedent, even. Like student debt forgiveness, it would benefit Black folks disproportionately; but it benefits all poor, disabled, and working class people more broadly, without such cause for contention.)

It angers me beyond words.

It angers me that the rest of the Party ties values-based leaders’ shoelaces together yet expects them to run better than anyone else.

It angers me that their refusal to lift us all up together, as Progressive leaders and mutual aid community organizers show us how to do, makes it so Senator Booker is a lone voice in the minority to begin with.

He shouldn’t be the minority here. We wanted Obama in 2008. We wanted “Change.” “Hope.” “Yes we can.” We wanted everything good that he promised before he was muzzled and had the life vampired out of him for eight years.

The depletion of his light was the depletion of our hope.

Clinton was the opposite of that.
Biden was no better than her.

And all this time, what we wanted was what Cory Booker just gave us. Stacey Abrams. Al Green. AOC. Jasmine Crockett. Truth-tellers who are not afraid of natural consequences, because they ain’t actin’ foolish in the first place. We could have settled for Bernie, for a minute. I swear that if we had to vote for an octogenarian, Maxine Waters could have really pulled it off.

But instead of giving us options we could believe in—the Change and Hope and Yes We Can that we f****** asked for in 2008—the DNC refused to listen, time and again, and set us up to fail.

The DNC ignored Dr. George Lakoff’s sensible, evidence-based, much-needed advice (pre-Obama) about values-based message framing. They took Don’t Think of an Elephant, tossed it aside, and proceeded toward a dead end at full steam.

So this whole 25-hour show with Booker has felt to me, heartbreakingly, like watching Jesus hanging on a cross while his own Party cheers about his strength of character, as if they didn’t nail him there themselves.

He’s even being framed in photographs with a halo around his head in the background, like Jesus, or a Catholic Saint.

How this doesn’t pain his colleagues to have done to him is beyond my comprehension.

Maybe it’s just activating my own trauma from having been an unpaid Executive Director of a nonprofit for a couple years. I just think we should care more for our servant leaders, rather than demanding more extraction from them.

I wonder how many Democrats will apologize to Senator Booker after this, rather than congratulating him?

Do they even see how much of their weight, their responsibility, he is lifting for them—because they couldn’t be bothered to carry their own share of the work sooner?

“Take up your cross and follow me” does not mean “Stand back wearing pink pantsuits and rainbow lapel pins applauding while Booker carries your cross for you.”