Last week, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia lost the Chicago mayoral election to Rahm Emanuel. Indeed, many of my activist friends are currently debating why Chuy lost, what mistakes were made during the campaign, and how to field better candidates in the future. In some ways, these are interesting questions. However, I don’t think those are the most useful questions for leftists to be asking themselves. Clearly, as Chuy’s campaign platform indicated, the Left doesn’t have much influence over the electoral process in Chicago. Do we wish to change this dynamic? How much energy should we spend on elections? How can we actually build power at the local level? To me, these are the questions we should be asking.

Right away, I should note that less than 40% of registered Chicagoans even bothered to show up and vote. Honestly, that fact doesn’t bother or surprise me, as I don’t expect people to get excited about mediocre candidates and electoral campaigns. The entire process is disempowering: show up, cast a ballot for a virtually indistinguishable candidate, go home and watch the results come pouring in while TV and radio commentators reassure everyone that our amazing democratic system functioned properly. Like sporting matches, many people are rendered impotent, virtual spectators in the electoral madness, rooting for their favorite team (candidate/party). In Chicago, however, there’s only one team: the Democratic Party. And that’s part of the problem.

To be sure, most Chicagoans simply aren’t excited about Democrats. After all, they’ve been running the city for more than five decades. Consequently, in recent years, Democratic politicians such as Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and US Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. have served prison sentences for their criminal behavior. People aren’t dumb; they see these lying rats on the evening news, peddling their nonsense. People know the system is broken.

Furthermore, Chicagoans understand that it’s not the Republican Party or the Right that has destroyed their beloved city, it has been liberal-centrists and neoliberals who’ve sold Chicago to the highest bidder. Remember, former Mayor Daley and Rahm both support gay rights and other socially progressive causes.

How then, can we expect voters, particularly young voters, and even more specifically, young voters of color, to show up and vote for Democrats, even if they’re from the fictitious “progressive wing” of the party? Anecdotally, I can say that many young black activists and average citizens didn’t show up to vote, because Chuy aimed to hire 1,000 more police officers and ran as the security candidate, focusing much of his messaging on public safety and violence. Obviously, violence is a problem in the city. Yet, how could liberals expect young black voters to show up and vote for a candidate who wanted to hire more police knowing full well that Chicago has one of the most corrupt and violent police forces in the nation?

For me, this problematic position was one of the largest stains on Garcia’s failed campaign. After almost nine months of sustained protests concerning policing and militarization, from Ferguson and New York to Oakland and Miami, someone in Chuy’s campaign didn’t reject this position? That’s amazing, and quite telling. Clearly, Chuy’s campaign managers didn’t have their ears to the ground. Additionally, it should be mentioned that Chuy didn’t have a serious environmental platform, nor did he explicitly say anything about corporations or banks. Hell, even my non-activist friends and acquaintances understand that those issues must be on any serious political agenda.

On a side note, I’m fully aware of Chomsky’s electoral advice and usually adhere to it. Noam’s basic maxim is to vote for Democrats in elections that don’t have a third party, or when the race is really close, and for third party candidates in elections where the Democrats are guaranteed to win. For those who are concerned with simple things like unemployment benefits or the minimum wage, small differences matter: I agree. But this doesn’t leave activists with much, or the average citizen who’s sitting at home wondering, “Why should I show up to vote for another crook with no principles who’s going to screw me over in the long-run?” If there was a movement capable of producing serious candidates, I’m sure Chomsky would change his opinion. For now, that’s the sad reality for the vast majority of us who vote.

Right now, the Left has no viable electoral options in the US, locally or nationally, let alone a party or platform that everyone can agree on. Sure, a socialist has been elected to city council in Seattle, but that development does not provide an adequate alternative to our various societal or environmental dilemmas, nor is it feasible for people living in cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Ferguson or Gary to vote for socialist candidates, as these cities do not possess the organizing infrastructures capable of conducting and winning socialist campaigns.

Here, the Left could learn a valuable lesson, as many of my activist friends refuse to organize around electoral campaigns or liberal causes. What this has done, locally and nationally, has been to create a dichotomy where liberal groups have a base of supporters while leftists operate on islands. In short, liberals have the numbers while leftists often present better analyses. This is a very problematic dynamic that must be addressed if we hope to create broad-based and effective political movements.

To be clear, I’m not dogmatic; and I don’t wish to set up any false dichotomies. To me, it makes sense to organize with any and all progressive groups and individuals, or at least those who adhere to similar values. I understand that’s not acceptable to some leftists, but I would argue that working with liberal groups is the only way to expose progressives to more radical analyses. Where else are they going to hear it? Liberals need to be engaged in dialogue with leftists, and vice versa. We could learn a lot from each other, no doubt.

For instance, the Left must learn how to garner neighborhood support, build community relations and develop long-lasting infrastructures/institutions, while liberals must be forced to examine the realities of empire and capitalism, among other issues. No one holds a monopoly on ideas or organizing techniques—that much is clear. And while we must always challenge the ideological foundation and sanitized history of Liberalism, it would be wise to recognize the power liberals hold within certain communities: labor, black neighborhoods, Latino organizations, neighborhood groups, etc.

For me, that doesn’t mean radical activists should constantly capitulate to liberal activists in terms of ideas, program, vision, values, etc., it’s simply a recognition that the left is completely fractured and almost totally detached from local communities and their various organizing efforts. Most of my leftist friends bounce from one conference to the next, one NGO job to another, and so on. Often, these folks live in many different parts of the world, sometimes moving every three or four years. Some of my friends attend undergraduate school on one side of the country, then travel abroad for graduate school, only to return home, or to another part of the country, wondering, “Why aren’t these activists reading Alain Badiou or Vandana Shiva?”

Clearly, the Left must be a rooted movement. According to most of my friends who are community organizers, the most effective movements are led by people who have long-lasting ties and bonds in their respective local communities. That’s the key to organizing: relationships and trust, not grandiose theories and analyses. Here, I’m critical of the Left because I consider myself a leftist and write for leftist publications. I interview leftists and work with leftist political movements around the world. Of course I have plenty of criticisms of liberals, but I’ll leave those for another day. Here, I’m interested in examining the electoral impotency of the Left and how to move forward.

Do leftists offer a vision for the city of Chicago? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Again, leftist ideologies and movements are quite fractured. I have friends who are democratic socialists, feminists, communists, anarchists, radical environmentalists, liberals, indigenous activists, libertarians, and so forth. It’s almost impossible to get these folks to even sit in the same room together, let alone work effectively with one another. But all that must change if we hope to win.

First of all, leftists need to drop the notion that just because our ideas seem better, people will automatically gravitate towards our movements, organizations and projects. We need to organize better. We need to start at the local level and develop real grassroots power. Knocking on doors and phone banking shouldn’t be confined to the electoral sphere. Right now, leftists are tinkering at the edges, hoping to influence liberals and those in power by changing the narrative, shifting discourse or engaging in symbolic actions. Obviously, these methods must be expanded.

Without numbers, we’re completely limited in what we can achieve. Yet, it seems the Left in the US is unwilling to engage in critical conversations about what we can do internally to be more effective. We know the Right is nuts; we know liberals aren’t offering anything new; and we know the system is inherently flawed and incapable of producing desired results; but we still spend most of our time offering up criticisms, as opposed to asking, “What can we as leftists do better in order to gain more power and influence?” The cynical response is that people are just too dumb or propagandized to realize their emancipatory potential. But where does that analysis leave us?

If we’re truly interested in getting as many people engaged as possible, we must meet people where they are. However, as Lierre Keith says, “We meet people where they’re at, but we don’t leave them there.” This is a good motto. Leftists can’t walk into communities, or show up to events, and hope to inject their ideas and programs without being engaged on a day-to-day basis in those same communities. It just doesn’t work. We can, of course, be critical in various publications, online, or other media outlets, but going to community events and ranting and raving about the ills of capitalism and liberalism turns people off. It’s that simple.

The Left, insofar as it exists in the American political arena, is frequently a self-referential entity. Like some segments of the Right, leftists often find themselves operating in their own special world of publications, ideologies, social circles, cultural artifacts and so on. In short, we too can fall victim to the echo-chamber, constantly talking in circles and only working with a very specific segment of the American population. I’ll never forget the time I brought my friend to a political event, one of his first. After the event was over, I asked him what he thought. He responded, “It’s like watching a snake eat its tail.” That metaphor has stuck with me ever since.

To finish, I will say that I don’t think building a party is the new political project of the day, if it ever was. On the other hand, I’m not saying that such a project couldn’t be useful or worthwhile. I think activists have to ask themselves, “How much time am I willing to spend working within the existing system?” Obviously, working within the system, fielding parties, candidates, codifying legislation, etc., is limited in scope. But so is working outside the system; our inability to dictate events as opposed to reacting to them would drastically change if we held the levers of power. This isn’t a prescription for a vanguard or any other antiquated notion concerning power, it’s just a recognition that being in the position of making decisions is better than reacting to the decisions imposed on us by liberals or elites.

Vincent Emanuele is a writer, activist and radio journalist who lives and works in the Rust Belt. He can be reached at vince.emanuele@ivaw.org