33 Musicians On Why They’re Voting in the 2020 Election

Election Day is November 3, and the stakes have never been higher. Between the pandemic, ongoing police brutality against Black Americans, a struggling economy, and an open Supreme Court seat, it’s more crucial than ever that we speak up at the polls. Donald Trump and Joe Biden are, of course, battling for the White House, but voters nationwide will also weigh in on an intricate array of local races and issues. With so many important choices on the ballot, Pitchfork reached out to politically engaged musicians to discuss why and how they’re voting in the 2020 election. In phone conversations, written submissions, and self-portraits, they shared thoughtful and varied responses, all of them digging deep into one of our most sacred American rights.

Yaeji

The current situation of the United States no longer allows for “maybe”—it calls for a “must.” We must vote and ensure our votes are counted in the most important election of our lifetime. This is why I’ll be voting early in New York. Here are some steps you can take to make sure you’re prepared for the polls this year.

• Make sure you’re registered to vote by checking your registration status

• Know your deadlines for voting by mail and early voting

• If you’re voting by mail, request your ballot at least 15 days before the election and follow all the instructions on the ballot closely

• If you’re voting in person, check your local polling station’s location (changes are possible due to COVID) as well as the voter ID requirements in your state

• Make sure to wear a face mask and stay a safe distance from others when you vote!

Kamasi Washington

I have a strong belief that we all have a responsibility to do our part in making the world what we want it to be. Voting leads to people wanting to take the future of the world and their lives into their own hands, and not always imagining that someone else is going to do it. Even if people think the system is corrupt, or they’re not sure that their vote really counts, that’s just more reason to get involved—if you really believe that people are trying to steal your ability to have a say on how this world is governed, not voting is exactly what they want you to do. We all need to weigh in, because we know that the people who have lots and lots of money are weighing in. That’s why things are so disproportionate.

When we speak up, we will see that we are not as different as people like to make us out to be. If there are only 10 people who are involved, it’s going to be best for those 10 people, and the rest of us will just get what we get. But if most Americans are actively involved, then it’ll sway towards what the majority of us really want: quality of life, equality, and peace for everyone.

David Byrne

I got my U.S. citizenship in 2012 so that I could vote. A presidential election is where we have the largest turnout, but that still means the 45 percent of people who don’t vote are ceding their voice to the ones who do. They’re saying, “OK, you decide what’s best for me and my family and my children. Make up my mind for me, because I don’t feel like going down to the elementary school today.” I know voting is far from perfect, and the people you elect aren’t going to do everything you hope they do. But we have a duty to get out there and make ourselves heard. We’re lucky that we’re able to do this. Despite all the problems with our system and everything else, we can’t just throw our hands up in the air. We have to try. If you don’t vote, then just shut the fuck up, you know?

I’m a big proponent of something that’s called ranked voting. There’s a few places, like Maine, that are experimenting with it. You put in your top five in order of preference. Let’s say your favorite is Bernie, so you put in Bernie as your No. 1 choice. And let’s say your second choice is Biden. So in the system we have right now, if you don’t get your top choice, your vote counts for nothing. But with the ranked voting, if your top guy is not going to win, your vote gets counted toward your second choice. It means that you still have a voice, and your vote isn’t wasted. I think it’s something we should look at more.

Rhiannon Giddens

I’m voting because I want to do what I can to save the American experiment. It’s that dire. I mean, it’s already failed, but the vote this November is the difference between possibly being able to put it back together again and the continued unraveling of everything we thought was sacrosanct. A presidential election shouldn’t be this important. Everything shouldn’t be resting on this one day. The whole system has been undermined.

I am torn between my realistic self and my optimistic self. My realistic self says nothing is going to fundamentally change, because everything we’re seeing today is founded along the cracklines of the original creation of the United States, and it’s all coming home to roost. Part of me is like, “Unless there’s a complete revolution, I don’t see how it’s really going to change.” However, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try. What are you going to lose by voting? You have nothing to lose but a little bit of your time.

We also have to ask ourselves: What does it mean to be a part of a nation? It’s way beyond waving a flag and saying we’re the best in the world. What are you going to do to uplift our country? A society is only as strong as the people at the bottom, because they are the ones forming a foundation for everything, especially when you talk about capitalism. If we’re going to actually make some change we’ve got to take a lot more interest in our civic duty.

Margo Price

I’m voting because we don’t need a wall to be united. Because our fellow Black Americans don’t deserve to be shot down in the street like they are less than human. Because our children don’t deserve to be murdered by semi-automatic weapons in school. Because women deserve the right to choose what happens to their own bodies. I know I live in Tennessee, a historically red state, but that’s why my blue vote matters even more. Can we flip the Senate and elect a Black woman like Marquita Bradshaw? I don’t know but I’m willing to try. I have hope that we can turn this country around, even though it feels like the truth is slipping through our hands. The injustice that was done to Breonna Taylor is unacceptable, and we can not be silent anymore. I fear for my children’s future. I fear for the animals going extinct right before our eyes. I fear for the mountains and rivers and oceans and the very air we breathe. I fear for who will fill the robe of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I fear American democracy is at stake but I will not run and I will not cry tears of defeat yet. I will vote because I dissent.

Vic Mensa

Next month I will be voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Perhaps more significantly, I will be casting my ballot against Donald Trump, a man who has come to personify the ugliest, most racist fibers in the bones upon which this so-called “land of the free” was erected. Parts of the constituency that the current president represents wishes literal death upon all those who are not a part of their homogenous fantasy of a pure-blooded Anglo-Saxon America of old. This is not hyperbole, exaggeration, or imagination. There is blood on the hands and streets of our home, and by and large it belongs to us.

As a supporter of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, I have been extremely critical of both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The time for focusing on their shortcomings, however, has passed. Angela Davis stated that this election is less about putting a candidate in the White House who shares our ideals or can be trusted to lead us in the right direction, because that individual doesn’t exist. Our motive here must be to elect the ticket with which we have the most potential to pressure an anti-racist agenda into legislation, which is obviously Biden-Harris. Perhaps even more compellingly, my good friend [community organizer] Richie Reseda made a recent statement on Instagram about how painful it will be for him to cast his first ever presidential vote for the same name he saw on his denied appeal while in the California penal system for 10 years: Kamala Harris. He goes on to say that for the greater good, he is willing to forgo his feelings about her to do what is right for the people. If he’s able to make that sacrifice, so am I, and so should you.

Billie Eilish

To tell the truth, I really don’t like politics and I wish I didn’t have to urge people to register and vote. I’d rather just focus on making art. But as artists with a platform, we have a special responsibility to lead by example and do whatever we can to make a difference.

There is so much at stake right now. After four years of Donald Trump, things are so much worse and actually really scary. In California the fires are worse than ever before. Climate change is as real as those fires, but the Republican Party denies it, and Trump blocks the science while he backs the fossil fuel industry. Racism is real, but Trump backs the racists. COVID is real and hundreds of thousands of Americans have died, but Trump and the Trump Republicans refuse to do something as simple as wear a mask. They block every move toward gun control, and my generation bears the burden. And as a young woman, I know my fundamental rights are now at risk because of Trump’s picks for the courts and because of Republicans in the Senate.

Whether or not you like politics, if you care about social justice and equal rights, and if you want people in office who will fight to address the climate crisis before we run out of time, you have to vote!

Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra

The really big issue for me is immigration. Last year I started working with a volunteer group called Freedom for Immigrants, and we would go visit folks in detention. In Louisiana, the men that I saw were in there for over a year. And it's all just for seeking asylum. This happened because the Trump administration criminalized asylum and immigrating. After being in these centers and getting close to these guys, I feel like I’ve seen this other part of it that I never knew before. I can’t imagine if this were my dad. I can’t imagine if this were my daughter.

The Biden-Harris platform states that they are going to end for-profit detention, which is really fucking huge. Because that’s the thing about these centers: They make money the longer people are stuck in there. I don’t expect politicians to save us. We have to hold them accountable. And they have not said that they’re going to abolish ICE, but they have said that they're going to do oversight of ICE—which to me is not enough, but still, we need to do something about this organization. I’m prepared to push for this to actually happen if they win. I’m like, “OK, you say you guys are going to do that. Let’s fucking do this, people. Let’s go.”

Since 2016, I have seen this country change in a way where people became really informed, like, “I'm going to go to the fucking town hall and I'm going to call my senators.” We’re coming with a different energy. For anyone who is saying that they don’t want to vote because the Biden-Harris team is not progressive enough, I would ask them to think about using their vote as a tool for people who are very much in danger right now. Maybe they will be voting for someone who is in detention, who cannot vote, who is like, “Please get this man out of office because he is dead set on destruction and violence.” We need to do something to stop this from getting worse and get back to a place where immigration is not a crime.

The Breeders’ Kelley Deal

As a self-employed musician, I accept that I’m living outside the norms of the straight job market and I am grateful that I get to make art for a living. However, that privilege comes with certain sacrifices. One of the most consequential has been the lack of access to employer-based health insurance.

I’m not alone. Even many home health care workers and hospital aides don’t qualify for employer-based health insurance because they are hourly workers. What are they supposed to do if they get sick? They can pay for it themselves and go bankrupt. They can forgo necessary treatments. Or, if they are poor enough, they can get Medicaid.

Since the passing of the Affordable Care Act, there has been a zealot-like attack by Republicans to undermine, hollow out, and legally challenge it. Yet there has been no effort to work with Democrats to amend or fix what we already have, and no attempt to produce a full replacement to it. Even during a global pandemic, when so many people have lost jobs that did provide their healthcare, the Republicans are still hellbent on getting rid of protections for pre-existing conditions.

The ACA is a needed supplement to our employer-based system. You can’t just say, “Everyone has to do whatever it takes to pay for their own medical costs.” That’s literally impossible for anyone with a chronic illness, cancer, a genetic disease, lots of things. The ACA makes insurance providers serve everyone, not just the healthy.

Arcade Fire’s Will Butler

Most of the Democratic politicians in New York run on the Democratic line and the Working Families Party line. So when I vote for president, I’m obviously voting for Biden and Harris, but I’m going to be voting for them on the Working Families Party line. That will help them to maintain their status as an official legal political party that’s on the ballot, which is in jeopardy, and then we have an institution that’s helping push progressive policies that are almost Canadian: paid sick leave, a better housing situation, a more sane public transit system. They’re pro-union, pro-raising the minimum wage. They’re not a national party, so they can’t put in a national healthcare system, but they would love that.

So much of the shit that we want to happen has to do with city and state politics—all the police stuff, almost all the prison reform issues. The Working Families Party can have immense influence on these things. It helps to have an institutional actor who is pushing for a better police contract when the police contract comes up. It’s about having some institutional capacity for the changes that actually feel possible.

Beyond voting, I’m mostly giving money to state legislative races in places like Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas. Arizona might get a Democratic state legislature this year—and they're the ones who did the “show me your papers” law. They have crazy stupid racist shit happen all the time, but if you have a Democratic legislature, all that stuff disappears. And Texas might have one house of its government go Democratic this year, which will give them a veto power. The state might not go for Biden, but they might get a Democratic house. When you look back over the headlines, all the horrible abortion bills and the anti-immigrant bills, all that shit can be stopped.

Denzel Curry

This is actually my first time voting, I just recently registered a few months back. I've evolved a lot since the last election, when I didn't think voting made a difference. I was wrong. My initial reaction to voting was always “fuck the system,” but when you think about it, how do you begin? Misinformation and the restriction of knowledge is just a small part of the oppression we deal with within our community. We gotta change that bullshit, open our eyes, break the cycle, and find candidates that are going to empower the community, reallocate funds, help reform the criminal justice system, and invest in the youth. We have a real-life dumb fuck governor in Florida currently trying to criminalize our right to protest, so our idiot mayor in Miami-Dade can fill that new prison he's trying to build. I still got a lot to learn about politics, but these are real issues that affect you and me. My ultimate goal in this election, though, is to abolish Trump by exercising our right to fire him for being an irresponsible white person.

Kim Gordon

We can’t do anything progressively until we get rid of Trump. Then we can work on Biden. My main concern right now is climate change. It’s tied to so many other things, like the economic structure. There’s such a wide gap of inequality, and that can be helped with changes that we make for the environment and creating new jobs. We can’t live in a country where people don’t believe science. Floods are happening, tornadoes, hurricanes. Living in California, you’re just so aware.

There’s also a proposition here, Proposition 15, which would make bigger businesses pay a more appropriate property tax. California used to have the best school system in the country, and the university system was free if you were a resident. But when Reagan was governor here in the ’60s and ’70s, his economics totally shut that down. And then when he took that approach to Washington, it was like, “Let's make the federal government really lean and then make the states pay for everything.” That's where a lot of the social safety nets went away.

Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh

We’re in a very dangerous time. Things have devolved at a much faster rate than I ever could have imagined on this planet, let alone this country. It seems like democracy is in danger of being eradicated. I’m voting to try and bring some sort of sanity back to our country.

I’m doing a project with a woman named Beatie Wolfe, Postcards for Democracy, in direct response to the possibility that our current government would destroy what’s been an important part of our democracy since the beginning. The post office needs to stay around. For some people in this country, that’s their only way of communicating with the world. They don’t have computers. And if something did happen to the internet, for instance, it would make post offices more important once again.

Personally, I have a love for post art. When I was first becoming an artist back in the ’60s, before the age of computers, artists did exchange and interact via post art. I would send a postcard to the visual artist Robert Rauschenberg, and he would send me one back with his artwork on it. As a nobody from Akron, Ohio, that was really important to me. I have very fond memories of the post office in my life, and I just wouldn’t want to see that disappear.

Beth Ditto

Voting is the least you can do. That’s hard to write because I do understand that they’re both rich old white men. One sniffs your hair, one grabs your vagina. I’m not here to be all “save democracy.” I’m here to say: There are two grandpas. There’s the one who gives you a nickel and remembers your birthday, who tells you ridiculous stories at bedtime and you’re like, “oh, grandpa.” When he comes to visit, he sleeps on the fold-out with grandma and doesn’t complain. And they wake up and make pancakes!

Then there’s the grandpa you hate playing Candyland with, because not only does he win every time, he cheats! (Same with checkers and Chutes and Ladders.) This grandpa cannot put the seat down—it’s like he has an allergy where if he puts it down, his testosterone levels decrease significantly. Let’s not forget his new wife, who you have to call by her first name because “she is too young to be a grandmother”! She once told you not to touch her purse in a snooty way, but quickly tried to sound as if she was just joshing. They don’t sleep over either! They stay in a Marriott two towns over (their points), where there is a pool but they don’t even ask you if you want to come swim! When they come over the next morning you are thinking, Yay! Maybe grandpa and not-old-enough-to-be-a-grandma will make us pancakes! But they had pancakes at the hotel.

You realize, your other grandparents aren’t fancy. Your grandma’s purse isn’t off-limits. In fact, she keeps candy in there just for you! That grandpa pops out his dentures to make you laugh. Sure, he might use outdated terms, but at the very least he makes pancakes in the morning. Because that’s what we’re dealing with, people. Will we get pancakes? It’s the bare minimum.

Public Enemy’s Chuck D

For years, voting to me meant, how do we build up a third party? I came out at the top of the year in support of Bernie Sanders, not because I thought he was eligible to be any president at 79, but his conversation about childcare and healthcare and climate [change] resonated with me. Now we’re down to the one and the two, and that’s what turns people off about voting—the eenie-meenie-minie-moe, simple math, primitive type of existence. It’s like, this or that—and that’s a fallacy of how this government works.

I also believe in things like a mandatory retirement of 65 for people in high authority positions. You’ve got Biden running for president at 78, you have Trump at 74, you had Sanders at 79. The amount of energy you need to be president of the United States? Come on, man. But now you can go with the flow of fascism and white supremacy, talk a lot of mess, and not really do your job. That’s what seems to have Donald Trump still existing. He really ain’t doing no work. He’s doing a presidential reality show.

If you’re really gonna do the job, it’s for [someone with] young energy. And Joe Biden, when he chose Kamala Harris, a Black woman, I’m going to have to say: yeah. Like Too Short said, the men done fucked up so much, I can’t even find myself voting for a man—especially a white male who is 75 to 78 years old. But it’s no time to have micro differences now when you’re looking right in the face of fascism. It’s as simple as this: It’s like voting for the side that I’m on versus the side that hates me.

ANOHNI

Trump’s lies, destructiveness, racism, and misogynist contempt have been frightening to watch unfold; his willingness to destroy democracy if that’s what it takes to maintain power feels unprecedented. It’s tempting to think that the crisis in America is all his fault. But racist police brutality, mass deportation, and widening income inequality were also grave, though more muted, features of the previous administration. Obama failed to facilitate the kinds of promised structural changes that would have protected us and made his legacy less fragile. Democrats have supported high tech companies including Google, Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, and Amazon, monopolies that have ruthlessly monetized the destruction of local economies, cultural firewalls, and fair media that once helped to protect our societies. Some of America’s working class, stripped of unions, permanent jobs, affordable healthcare, and hope of upward mobility, vote for Trump as an angel of retribution upon the “elite, wealthy liberals” who betrayed them. No longer feeling entitled to better lives—and fed a stream of Fox News propaganda, rage and fundamentalism—these Americans now vote to defeat the Democrats who humiliated them. Meanwhile at ground zero, global warming has been largely ignored by both parties for over 30 years.

The Democratic Party is also corrupt. However, it is still a more inclusive and negotiable entity, whereas Trump and his party, obviously, are not. So I am going to vote down the line for the Dems, as they have the only chance of beating the current administration. This isn’t the time for me to abstain, or vote Green, as gratifying as that might feel. It will only speed up the collapse of the things I care about. Coral reefs, forests, glaciers, and ice caps are collapsing; biodiversity is in freefall. If we don’t elect someone other than Trump, we turn away from arguably our last chance to avert the worst effects of global heating and eco-collapse. On the bright side, if we get through the rest of Trump’s term without detonating a nuclear weapon, I believe we will still have something to be grateful for.

Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner

Being a poll worker felt like a very tangible thing that I could do. I’m not really at risk and I feel comfortable helping in this way. I feel very proud to be doing it, honestly. I’ve never felt this American sense of duty before—this is the closest I’ve gotten to having that.

At training, our instructor asked us to raise our hands if it’s your first time working the polls, and I would say 95 percent of the room was working polls for the first time. The best thing that can come out of so much hatred and the exacerbation of what was already wrong with our country will be that the American public will wake up and become more politically active, and not just in the general election but at a grassroots level. Biden was not my first, second, or third pick, but I have faith that we can push further left once we get a Democrat in office.

I’m concerned about what shady shenanigans the Republicans have up their sleeves to disenfranchise voters. I felt it was really important to be on the ground and see what was going on with my own two eyes. There’s a lot of protocol in place [at the polls] to make sure things don’t get rigged, but I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing yet on election day. In New York, we’re expected to work from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. You have to stay there as long as it takes to count all the ballots, but that’s not even ensured because you have to make sure that all your numbers are correct and if they’re not, you have to stay there until they are. I didn’t realize quite how grueling it was.

Tinashe

After a year of uncertainty, stress, massive layoffs, and death, we have a responsibility to protect the people who this administration does not protect. Voting for Donald Trump this election is an act of violence against middle-class Americans, Black people, immigrants, poor people, women, LGBTQ people, and countless others. Their rights have already been stripped away, and it will only get worse. We deserve a leader who at least tries to care for anyone other than himself. Vote for Joe Biden, period.

Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker

This November, in the most important election in my lifetime, I am voting for Biden and Harris. My vote is my voice, my way of standing up against this racist and misogynist in the White House. Trump has aligned himself with white supremacists, refusing to denounce them in the recent presidential debate. He has repeatedly targeted our city, Portland, sending federal troops in to beat and harass protestors. He has emboldened the racist Proud Boys to come into our city with guns and threats and Confederate flags. Enough. I love Portland, and I want to work on making it a more livable and equitable place for everyone.

I am also supporting Sarah Iannarone for mayor of Portland, and musicians here did a benefit for her campaign. Sarah has the courage to step into problem solving, and has progressive policies like expanding the Portland Street Response program and reaching carbon neutrality by 2030. Please vote this November! Every vote matters.

Dua Saleh

I encourage people to look into voting for in-state and municipal government during this upcoming election—your statehouse representatives, senators, judges, district attorneys, school board members, city/township officials, and more. Local elections are instrumental in shaping the sociopolitical climate in your area, especially as policymakers have a direct impact on your way of life in your immediate area. Research local candidates and how they’ve pushed or created policies in the past. It’s also just nice to be informed on the movement of politics in your area, even if you are abstaining from voting.

One issue that’s been a point of concern for me in the upcoming election is the presence of police officers and school resource officers in Minneapolis Public Schools. I want to vote for school board members that plan to keep our children safe from the school-to-prison pipeline and from the militarized and aggressively racist police state. Another concern of mine is universal healthcare coverage so that more people can access support for their medical needs at all times, and especially during a pandemic like the one we’re in. One person that has continued to fight for healthcare coverage for all is U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar. She’s a Black Muslim woman who has been pushing forth narratives that are more in line with my politics than her opposing candidate. These policymakers affect how we all navigate everyday life. Choose to be informed, for your sake and for your community’s sake.

Downtown Boys’ Victoria Ruiz

What’s driving me out to the polls in November is a socialist movement that has been around for a long time and is getting stronger and stronger. It’s the fight for the right to have the most basic resources that we need to survive, like medical care and housing, and being free from police violence. Bernie Sanders and a lot of leaders in the movement—even Angela Davis, who is such an incredible Black communist—are asking us to go out and vote. As someone who is involved in organizing for these basic resources, I want to follow leaders who have more experience than I do. I am certainly not going out to vote because I believe in Joe Biden. I believe in a movement. Socialism is a very alive movement that has had some big wins and big losses, and right now leaders in the movement are asking us to vote.

There’s a quote by [Marxist philosopher] Antonio Gramsci: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” The only way to survive in situations like the pandemic, the election, and the uprising after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others is through the optimism of the will, and then also being able to accept that there’s going to be pessimism, failure, and loss in our minds. It’s OK to have both. It's OK to be optimistic when out in the streets and engaged in action with people and then when you're thinking about it to be incredibly worried. With COVID in particular, it’s not a matter of simply being a pandemic. The effects of COVID in the United States have been created by the United States. Billionaires are getting richer after COVID. Black people and other communities of color are being hit the hardest. That just shows that this is a class and race pandemic as well. It’s been really difficult to process and grieve, but it’s also very much part of what we are already trying to confront.

Mavi

Neither political party has had that much vested interest in increasing access to capital and social mobility for poor people who are not civically engaged, but I do believe a fundamental difference between them is how they interact with the courts and with access to the voting process. In a population like Black men, who are so affected by mass incarceration, understanding who appoints our judges is super important. We can’t let bad actors be the main appointers of judges. The further we dig our hole with white supremacists’ infiltration of the polls and the courts, the smaller our chance at making any great progress as Black people through political means. If your vote is not against voter suppression, it’s for voter suppression. That's why I think people should exercise their rights.

I'm voting for Yvonne Lewis Holley for lieutenant governor of North Carolina. She’s about empowering expungement programs for felons, ending bail for non-flight risks, putting mental health and drug counseling over the police, and immigrants having access to in-state tuition and federal aid. She’s a Howard graduate, a Black woman.

I’m 20. I was born in 1999. Anything I say about voting and politics is a combination of my experience and what I’ve been able to glean from other people’s experiences, just reading and researching and talking. And that’s super subject to change, bro. We are born into a world where some political freedoms have been won; any Black person that was born before 1968 had no civil rights. We’re in a position now where we have to strongly demand the real material steps toward us being OK, and us being free.

Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo

It’s no secret that the rhetoric around climate change has shifted in the past decade from preventing it to hedging our bets against the worst-case scenario. Whether it’s a bleak assessment from NASA, or a wildfire outside your window, the forecast is clear: Without intervention, we’re careening towards global disaster. Biden’s plan to combat climate change may not be the FDR-level mobilization I personally hoped for, but its proposal to reach net zero emissions by 2050 is definitely ambitious and a clear step in the right direction. It also outlines how to accomplish this: through a $2 trillion investment in electrifying our energy sector, modernizing infrastructure, retrofitting buildings, and, maybe my favorite part, the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency on Climate, which will subsidize the research necessary to develop these technologies.

Coming out of the dredges of COVID-19, we must seize the opportunity to rebuild our economy more responsibly. And though the concept of American exceptionalism may have been an arguably dangerous farce to exert upon the world in the past, the chance for leadership through example in this particular case may actually be one worthy of taking

Archie Shepp

We need to correct a lot of things that are going wrong in this country. We have the virus and the excessive amount of fatalities relating to that, some of them people that I know—musicians. Some of this could have been avoided; safe distancing, masks, and so on have not really been encouraged by the current administration. We lost Wallace Roney, who played with Miles, and it seemed to me an untimely passing for a man his age [59], just at the peak of his musical prowess. We lost the father of Wynton Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis, which was very sad and untimely, even though he was a man of some age. And Lee Konitz, a very fine man, excellent saxophonist. He was also in his twilight years, but his passing was untimely, because it seems to have been provoked by these liars. These are people who I knew and had contact with. I’m really quite worried by the way things have been going. The direction could have been reversed a lot earlier, and a lot of lives might have been saved.

It’s also important that we vote to avoid another kind of civil war. The right-wing factions are becoming more and more aggressive, even the president, who I don’t think is going to go gently into that good night. I think he’s going to really raise a lot of hell before he steps down, or is forcibly removed from office. I’m concerned about gerrymandering and the fact that people who should be eligible to vote will be divested of that right. Blocks are being put up arbitrarily. In Florida they have tried to take away the rights of former felons to vote because they haven’t paid fines—but I’m encouraged by the fact that people like Michael Jordan and LeBron James have put up money to try to defray the costs for these former felons so that they can vote. The mail has been tampered with. These things are means to curtail the liberal vote and people who would support change. Let’s hope we get enough people out to really change things.

Chicano Batman’s Carlos Arévalo

Enough of this four-year American nightmare. I’ll be voting Democrat this election because I want to see science celebrated instead of scorned, systemic racism dismantled, policing reformed, COVID-19 stopped, climate change slowed, families freed from detention camps, and our collective sense of humanity restored. The Democratic establishment is not really my bag, but I find solace in hoping that the future of the party lies within the platform created by Bernie Sanders and championed by the likes of AOC and “The Squad.” But before we get ahead of ourselves, we must set our gaze on thwarting the most serious modern threat to our imperfect Democracy: the current administration and its GOP enablers in Congress. We must vote them out.

The news cycle seems more Orwellian with each passing day. We’ve witnessed the current Republican administration enact policies that license behavior straight from the fascist playbooks of Hitler and Mussolini. The latest is mass sterilizations via hysterectomies given to unknowing immigrant women detained in Georgia and the executive branch planning to create a commission that fosters “Patriotic Education.” OK, Nazi much? All of this pain and hatred aimed towards Black and brown Americans in order to maintain the foot-on-neck pressure of white supremacy must cease now before it’s too late. We can all help end this if we brave the virus, put on our masks, and go vote. Take a friend or family member, help them get registered if they aren’t, and let us reinstate the sanctity of truth and start the long road towards healing. The change won’t be immediate, but at least the momentum will have shifted towards a direction that keeps America's idealized relationship to totalitarianism as one described only as our eternal foe in the history books.

Palehound’s Ellen Kempner

On election night 2016, my friends and I walked home with a new feeling in our chests that has yet to go away, a feeling of doom. We huddled together and cried, asking, “How much can really happen in four years?” Well here we are, four years later. We’re wearing surgical masks to protect against a pandemic, watching the West Coast burn to the ground, and witnessing countless horrors against POC, including the constant slayings of Black people by police, and mass forced hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women of color in concentration camps. That, and so much more, can happen in four years.

We as citizens of America are effectively powerless over the atrocities of our government 99 percent of the time. This election is that tiny 1 percent chance that we have to actually make a difference. It’s almost pointless to try to get people “excited” about voting—this is not a school election for class president, this is combat against the deepest evil that exists.

I don’t like Biden, but I’m voting for him because I can. Because I’m privileged enough to have the option to vote in a landscape of voter suppression. If you have this privilege, it is your duty to use it. Vote for all of the Americans who cannot, whether it be incarcerated folks or undocumented immigrants, because it will be them who suffer the most under Trump, not you.

Lucy Dacus

The U.S. didn’t start being corrupt when Trump was elected—it has been corrupt since the very beginning, from the moment early colonizers claimed indigenous land. Biden will not fix it, but we can only hope that he will be less militant, ecologically disastrous, and bigoted, and more suggestable through direct action and conscious of public health. I would encourage people to become familiar with local elections. Voting will never be as powerful as devoting time, energy, and money directly towards taking care of each other. And whatever the result of the election, we will need to take care of each other.

Dawn Richard

It is imperative that we don’t let names like Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, and so many others get lost in the wind, but that we lift them up for change. We need to be unapologetic, outspoken, and unruly, and we cannot allow for people of color, women, underprivileged communities, and so many more to be subjected to the inhumane actions that have been going on for the last four years. We have to vote to invoke change, from the smallest elections to the largest. I don’t care who you believe in, just believe enough to vote.

Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino

I’m voting this November because I truly believe the future of our world depends on it. I believe in women’s rights and I deeply care about access to safe reproductive health, which includes abortion. I believe in the sanctity of protecting the lives of the most marginalized people in this country. I believe that Black Lives Matter. Living in California my entire life, I have witnessed the results of climate change with my own eyes, so I vote for candidates who actually believe climate change is real.

I have been a very outspoken supporter of Bernie Sanders since 2016 and I will never give up fighting for an America that resembles Bernie’s vision. However, I cannot sit idly by and allow my support for Bernie to blur my vision to what is currently happening directly in front of us. Joe Biden was never my ideal candidate, but I believe we have no other option. I also believe that Biden has empathy, which is far more than can be said for Donald Trump. I believe that Biden is capable of listening to his constituents and being held accountable for his actions. There is no such thing as a perfect politician, and I simply do not subscribe to the notion that “they are both equally bad.” One candidate will fight for the rights of the most oppressed in this country, while the other will continue to erase them. If we sit this one out, bigotry, hatred, and fear win. We have a choice to move in a better direction, and that choice is Joe Biden.

Dehd’s Jason Balla

I’m voting for a government that invests in our divested communities and one that takes global warming seriously. At the center of these issues is food, which accounts for roughly 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. We need to change how we produce food and how we get it to our refrigerators. Even more important, we need to make sure it’s available to everyone. Access to healthy food is a right, and so many people across our country, and in my city of Chicago, don’t have that access. How can you worry about anything else when you’re worrying about the next meal? Without these basic needs met, how can our communities find security?

The Democrats aren’t perfect, but they can win. And anything is better than what we have right now. We need to start steering the ship towards the change we want to see. It might feel like no one's listening, but no one will hear you if you don’t at least speak.

Teejayx6

I made the song “Black Lives Matter” to spread awareness of what’s going on in America, where we got a fucked-up president that’s literally doing nothing to stop the police from killing our people. It’s a message to Black people saying that I think we should get revenge by making them feel our pain. That’s a thing about my music, I speak facts and knowledge to my fans. I always do research about everything that’s going on in life. I kind of look at myself as a leader because I’m giving back what I know and helping others—which is something Trump is not doing. I don’t want Trump as our president because I feel like he don’t really care about us.

Soccer Mommy’s Sophie Allison

Right now, America needs to make serious changes. We cannot continue to have our leaders stand for the racism that is so ingrained in society. We cannot continue to ignore climate change. We have to get COVID-19 under wraps before more people die. While I feel that Biden is a lesser of two evils, I know that, if he is elected, we will have a better chance at addressing a lot of these urgent problems. It is very easy to understand how people have become alienated from the voting process, but it’s important to elect officials who, at the very least, will not be working against us. Biden may not offer us all of the change we need, but we have to do some damage control in order to work towards a better future.

The Roots’ Black Thought

I’ve voted in every election since I was 18. Like most cities, Philly has a thing for its mayors. Through them we have witnessed—and felt—the very real consequences of gross misuses of power firsthand. The city shifted around a mayor’s terms, beliefs, and implementations: Whether there were more jobs available in the summer through local, government-funded programs. If we couldn’t go to school because of a teacher strike. If the police began targeting me even more heavily than usual. If the judges for my cases offered alternatives to juvenile detention or not. I realized at an early age that the way I moved through life was interconnected with politics, and I could change my daily experience just by showing up to vote for candidates that I believed would actually make the city better.

This basic understanding sparked a deeper interest. I’d augment reading political theory and ideas with watching U.S. and world news. Traveling showed me up-close and personal the social difference a democratic system made. I knew that the U.S. is and has been flawed, especially for Black people, but I also knew that my entire being could be dedicated to shifting its problematics to make it better. From that knowledge came albums like Wake Up! It also led me back to Philly every election year to cast a ballot for both the local and national elections.

This year, the consequences of that same gross misuse of power that I watched happen in Philly can be seen on the national level. It’s exhausting. Just when we think we might have a moment of even the slightest reprieve, this man exceeds his previous level of chaos. With this election we’re voting to save our right to have a democracy. Under a fascist regime there will be nothing we can do to change our world anymore. Our vote literally will no longer matter. And the decisions made at the top will trickle down into all aspects of our everyday existence.

We’re voting for the Supreme Court Justices that will be nominated over the next four years to uphold or upend numerous laws that protect all of our rights for generations to come: access to safe abortions—something that men need to care about too—voting and voter suppression laws, LGBTQ+ discrimination. If you’re not impacted by these types of decisions—congratulations, you’re privileged. Vote for those of us who are.

We’re voting for the possibility of a stimulus check to help out families in need. For detention centers for immigrants to become more humane, and children to be returned to their parents. For a candidate that will begin to discuss what it means to defund the police to protect against systemic racism on local levels. For basic human decency. For an end to blatantly racist support and rhetoric. For the idea that all of us are equal, and for laws that protect that right. We’re voting for some modicum of decency to be returned to the presidency so that we can begin to change the systems that oppress us.

We’re voting.

Additional reporting by Quinn Moreland and Hilary Hughes

Originally Appeared on Pitchfork