If we don’t defeat fascism today, we set our progressive movement back during a moment of history in which we don’t have a minute to spare.

It is both complicated and simple.

Liberation is not voting. Voting is a tool. Liberation is the ability to lawfully declare and defend the full humanity of everyone. This election is not about liberation. No single election can or ever will be. This election is about defense and blocking the most immediate threat to our survival so our social movements can continue to struggle toward winning everything our people need to live good lives.

In 2020 when our coalition of social movements defeated former U.S. President Donald Trump, we not only blocked his second term, but we made room for what immediately followed. When President Joe Biden took office in 202, his day one executive orders included rescinding Trump’s Muslim ban, canceling construction on the Keystone pipeline, implementing and extending moratoria on deportations and evictions, rejoining the Paris climate agreement, and firing the anti-union lawyer Trump appointed as the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. And beyond that, social movements were able to pressure Biden to forgive 175 billion dollars in student loan debt. It mattered then and it matters now who will be president. Not to mention the actual progressive policies that cities and states have been able to pass during this period. Our movements will be better positioned to win more things if we defeat Trump.

And that’s not the lesser of two evils; it’s a strategy. If the coalition to defeat Trump and elect Harris wins, that means we are less likely to lose more Supreme Court justice seats, which means legally we won’t be less human under the eyes of the law.

Y’all, fascism has a definition. Fundamentally, fascism is a far-right authoritarian political movement aimed at controlling government. We don’t currently live under fascism, corporate Democrats are neoliberal and not liberatory but they’re not actually fascists. Trump and MAGA Republicans are fascists because they lie about the legitimacy of elections that they don’t win and have shown they will attempt coups and set fires to ballot boxes and threaten election workers. Trump and MAGA Republicans know their policies are devastating for everyone except billionaires and that their policies don’t actually have the support of the majority of people, so they can’t actually control government without violence – i.e., if they allow democracy to continue. They understand that what our social movements have won is an obstacle to implementing the policies they want.

So basically, I’m saying I’m voting for Kamala Harris because all of what Trump represents and will deliver is bad for our movement. Having a fascist president will destroy (astronomically) more lives than having a neoliberal capitalist president. And because I made a lifetime commitment to ensure that our people are recognized as full humans, I have developed politically to not abandon options that get us closer to or push us away from that commitment. Because my goal is liberation, like it is for so many of you, and because we simply do not (yet) have the political power to influence (let alone make) liberatory decisions/policies/laws (in perpetuity), I’ve come to the conclusion (because preserving life is always my immediate goal and liberation is my north star), that even when the options are unsavory (which is not new, they have always been at the presidential level), a choice to take action within the political system we all live in, must be made.

Politically, we are and have been in the realm of strategies vs. strategies. Our opposition: capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist goal since 1865 is to strip away every hard-fought and strategically won right from our freedom movement—like the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. More recently, these forces have been joined by evangelical Christans in repealing Roe v. Wade. And striking key provisions from the Voting Rights Act. That’s their overarching strategy. That’s the great America our opposition wants. And it is complicated and it is simple. And for 159 years our freedom movement has been utilizing our own (one of many, I might add) strategy to fight back. Yes, elections and voting. There are millions of people who now have the right to vote, not because it was given, but because it was a strategy that won. A political campaign that countless numbers of people across many southern states, throughout multiple decades, dedicated innumerable hours to. Because our ancestors in political struggle understood 159 years ago that elections and voting are a brilliant vehicle to use as we move towards our ultimate goal of liberation.

Y’all. It is complicated. And it is simple. They are both imperialist. One a fascist imperialist and the other a capitalist imperialist. And there is an ocean of difference between the two.

And we might be in the fourth quarter of humanity. I am not being alarmist or hyperbolic when I say this. We have limited time to decrease carbon emissions such that the planet doesn’t reach a climate “tipping point” from which humanity cannot recover. We can’t lose another four years, and we may lose way, way more than four years, because every time Republicans gain power, they change the rules of the game in order to move closer to one-party, minority rule that can’t be challenged through democratic channels (fascism). So we have to be able to shift climate policy—but we’re potentially headed into a political reality where everyday people won’t be able to impact any policies.

It isn’t true that every time when we fight, we win, but when we don’t fight, we’ll definitely lose.