# Introduction It's difficult to calculate how harm is reduced when comparing things such as deportation of Indigenous people, damage by drone strikes, sexual violence, etc. >Though there are some political distinctions between the two prominent parties in the so-called U.S., they all pledge their allegiance to the same flag. Red or blue, they’re both still stripes on a rag waving over stolen lands... >What we assert here is that the entire notion of “voting as harm reduction” obscures and perpetuates settler-colonial violence, there is nothing “less harmful” about it, and there are more effective ways to intervene in its violences. Harm reduction was established in the 1980s as a public health strategy for dealing with substance use issues. But "harm reduction" in the context of voting means something entirely different. >If voting is the democratic participation in our own oppression, voting as harm reduction is a politics that keeps us at the mercy of our oppressors. Under colonial rule, voting is a strategy of defeat and victimhood that prolongs suffering. Harm reduction may be sincere, but hard won reform gains can be easily reversed by the stroke of a politician's pen.[^1] Voting as harm reduction instils a false sense of solidarity among those most vulernable. Harm reductionist liberals are often found denouncing more militant direction actions as acts that "only harm our movement" and thereby pacifying movements. # The Native Vote: A Strategy of Colonial Domination # Assimilation: The Strategy of Enfranchisement # You can't decolonize the ballot # Rejecting settler colonial authority, aka not voting. ![[Voting-is-Not-Harm-Reduction-Zine.pdf]] # References 1. Reference one [^1]: Note one