[blind-democracy] ‘A voice for the excluded’

  • From: "Roger Loran Bailey" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
  • To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2016 10:20:33 -0400

http://themilitant.com/2016/8023/802350.html
The Militant (logo)

Vol. 80/No. 23      June 13, 2016


‘A voice for the excluded’

Cuban youth paper interviews Socialist Workers Party candidate



The following interview appeared in the May 8 issue of Juventud Rebelde, the newspaper of the Union of Young Communists of Cuba, under the headline, “Alyson Kennedy: A Voice for the Excluded.” Translation is by the Militant.




Most people think that only two parties participate in the U.S. presidential elections, the Democrats and Republicans. But others persist in raising a different class viewpoint, despite the system rendering them invisible.

BY JUANA CARRASCO MARTÍN
The U.S. election campaign is reaching its climax with the two major parties selecting their candidates. Hidden behind this show is a system that defends a single set of interests — those of big capital, the world of finance, the arms industry, the polluters of the earth’s climate, the exploiters of workers in [their] backyard and of the wealth and goods produced by professionals, workers, and peasants in much of the world, where the imperialist multinationals plunder and intervene.

However, though buried by the media, which has its own part to play in this show, there are small parties — often persecuted, sidelined, and excluded — that bring to the streets and, when possible, into the election booths, the real interests of working people.

A small woman with an easy smile, plainspoken, convincing, and firm, she presents the other side, though not of the same coin. On the contrary, she exposes and condemns what is actually taking place across the United States in 2016.

Alyson Kennedy is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for president. She is joined by Osborne Hart on the SWP’s presidential ticket, which was announced February 12.

On May 1, Kennedy marched with the Cuban people in the International Workers Day Parade along Havana’s Avenida Paseo. She participated as part of a delegation of mothers and relatives of victims of police violence in the United States. She took advantage of an exchange with Juventud Rebelde to speak about what’s taking place in her country and her impressions of her first trip to Cuba.

You are the Socialist Workers Party candidate in the November 8 general elections, but all we hear about are the Republican and Democratic Party campaigns.
“The main thing the U.S. elections are revealing is the deep crisis within the bourgeois Republican and Democratic political parties. We have seen how candidates Donald Trump (Republican) and Bernie Sanders (Democrat) are receiving substantial support because they present themselves as being different from the other politicians. They portray themselves as if they aren’t part of the political machine. That’s why they are getting a lot of support, including from many workers who take part in their rallies.

“There are reasons for this. We must remember the deep worldwide economic crisis and how it is felt in the United States as well. The government says there is an economic recovery, but unemployment remains high. It’s higher than we’ve seen in years, because there are workers who aren’t included in the statistics.

“While campaigning I’ve met workers who’ve told me they haven’t found jobs since the 2008 economic downturn,” says Alyson, who has supported the strike this year by 40,000 workers at Verizon, the telecommunications company, the largest work stoppage in the United States in many years. The workers have had no contract since August, while Verizon is seeking to cut pensions and to allow the outsourcing of work. Verizon says it has trained thousands of nonunion employees to replace striking workers.

Kennedy says that for all U.S. workers, “wages continue to stagnate. Forty percent of the U.S. workforce earn less than $15 an hour, which is not enough for a family to live on. This has led many workers to begin to question what is happening in the United States and to have less confidence in what the Democratic and Republican parties are doing in relation to this crisis.”

But these candidates talk about change.
“That is what’s behind the support Trump and Sanders are receiving. But no matter who is elected, there will be no changes that improve the situation of working people.

“All significant change in the United States — such as the fight against racial segregation, the struggle for unionization in the 1930s, the anti–Vietnam War struggle, the struggles of women for the right to abortion — has been won through demonstrations in the streets. That’s also true for the struggles we’ve seen recently, like the fight for unions, to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and against police violence.”

This resolute statement by the political activist is based on her long personal experience as a worker and union organizer. Alyson Kennedy, who joined the socialist movement in 1973, was a coal miner in Alabama, Colorado, Utah, and West Virginia. She joined the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in 1981 and was one of the leaders of a strike in Utah in 2004.

She was part of the first wave of women who entered the mines in the United States in order to break down divisions based on sex and to strengthen working-class solidarity. She joined the Coal Employment Project, an organization that defended the right of women to work in the mines and fought against workplace harassment.

She’s familiar with the struggles carried out by the UMWA in the 1960s and 1970s for job safety. Those strikes, which shook the country, won the right to refuse to work under unsafe conditions. She recognizes, however, that the movement has been eroded and that today the majority of U.S. mines don’t have unions. This is what Alyson talks to U.S. workers about.

She doesn’t do so from the outside or from a theoretical view of the class struggle. Today Alyson Kennedy works in Chicago at a Walmart, the largest chain of retail stores in the world, condemned in many countries for the exploitative conditions it imposes on its workers and employees.

“That’s why I, as a candidate of the Socialist Workers Party, and my running mate Osborne Hart, as well as our other candidates for Senate and other offices, get a good reception from workers, because they are open to discussing a revolutionary perspective,” she says.

“Workers know they’re being exploited, they know what’s happening in the country and in the world,” says Alyson Kennedy, who emphasizes that one of the issues that this campaign addresses is opposition to U.S. involvement in the Mideast. “And many workers are also willing to hear about the Cuban revolution,” she adds.

You mentioned Cuba. What brings you to our country, at the time of the May Day celebration?
“I’ve come to Cuba as part of a delegation of working-class women who are fighting against police brutality, of which there are many victims in the city where I live, Chicago.

“This is my first visit to Cuba, although I know a good deal about the island. Through the party’s activity we educate about Cuba and worked for years for the release of the Cuban Five, and we educate about the need to end the embargo (blockade).

“In spite of the short time I’ve been here, I’ve been able to see the country first hand, and this will greatly help me explain to workers there why Cuba is an example for us. If Cuba was able to make a revolution and create a society that addresses workers’ needs, we can do it in the United States, too,” the socialist leader emphasizes.

She explains why she thinks this is clearly and certainly possible: “We have a long history of struggle in the United States, as well. Workers in the United States must become aware of what they’ve won through struggle. We have to realize the power we have and our own worth.”

She concludes her words for the readers of Juventud Rebelde with a pledge:

“I want you to know that when we return we’ll redouble our efforts in the fight against the blockade and for the return of the territory occupied in Guantánamo, which belongs to Cuba. Having been here helps us realize why it’s important to continue to fight for our rights.”


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Militant fund over the top!
Militant Fighting Fund April 2- May 24 (Final)
Join the Socialist Workers Party campaign in 2016!
Active Workers Conference--Classes



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