Decompiling Oppression #150
Sam McVeety
Throughout this year, I've been committed to embracing celebration when I can, and indeed: there's a lot to celebrate from last Tuesday's election. Among the many, many exciting results: local wins across Washington State, and overwhelming support for candidates and initiatives who prioritized affordability and meeting people's basic needs. Seventeen years after some corners of the country were panicking at the prospect of electing a Muslim socialist president (he wasn't), New York City elected an actual Muslim (democratic) socialist as its next mayor. Beyond that, this election was a victory for the idea of democracy, and a rebuke of the ongoing authoritarian project to set neighbor against neighbor.
In this precarious time, a rallying cry has been to block and build, and Tuesday results showed the importance of both. A framing that has been resonating a lot with me lately is that each election is an opportunity to select the terrain for future organizing (and future resistance). I might like some candidates better than others, and, leaders who support free and fair elections make for objectively better organizing terrain than those who would undermine democracy. To that end, having executives in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City who stand in clear opposition to the administration's continued antidemocratic abuses is categorically a good thing for 2026 and 2028.
Here in Washington State, we once again saw the importance of building local power and the long-term infrastructure of democracy. Frequent readers may recall that the Washington Voting Rights Act (WVRA) provides a strong legal tool to build more representative governing bodies, and Sunnyside provided the latest case in point. After settling a lawsuit by agreeing to districted (as opposed to at-large) elections in the wake of a WVRA challenge, the five-member Sunnyside School District will welcome a majority of new directors this cycle, each bringing their lived experience to the role.
Back across the mountains, in Seattle, Dionne Foster is headed to the Seattle City Council as the latest chapter in her career of advocacy. With more than a 23-point lead in the latest ballot drop (against an opponent who favored private money over democracy vouchers), she will soon join Councilmember Rinck in the city's other at-large position. Seattle voters also offered overwhelming support (up 40 points) to Councilmember Rinck's own Seattle Shield Initiative, which lowers taxes on small businesses while raising them on the largest ones in order to fund essential city services.
While the WVRA seeks to improve representation in politics, 2025 has also brought us flagrant abuses of this principle, embodied and propelled by the Texas gerrymander. California's Prop. 50 (leading by 29 points) blunted this threat most directly, and there's cause to hope that the clarity of Tuesday's result will temper ambitions of gerrymandering elsewhere. To see why, it's important to realize that the more brazen a gerrymander, the riskier it is. For example, if you take four districts, one with a 20-point partisan lean, and the others evenly matched, you could turn those into four "safe" districts with +5 partisan lean... unless there's a wave election (let's say +8 the other way) and you lose not just three seats, but all four.
Tuesday's election also tells us more about the past, too. With significant shifts in vote margins across nearly all demographic groups, the election results all but destroyed any pretense of a lasting "realignment" coming out of 2024. Going into 2025, many eyes were on non‑white, working‑class/lower-income, and young Americans, who swung rightward by 12% in 2024. This year saw a 25% reversal, erasing last year's gains and then some. After an outcome in 2024 driven by anti-incumbent sentiment and economic trauma, 2025 provided a mirror image of that.
Looking again to the future, the road ahead is still a long one. Even so, the path looks just a little bit clearer, especially if we look carefully at what people voted for: a society which protects the rights of the vulnerable, where everyone has the support they need.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: What is one hope you have for the year ahead?
Communal: What can we focus on building now, so that the future is better than the status quo we left behind?
Solidarity: Support the Washington State Budget and Policy Center and their work to create a bright economic future for everyone in Washington State.
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