Gadzooks! Egad! and Well I'll be!
Can it be that we have been "Konked by the Kollossal Klub of Kismet."
On 11/15/2015 1:04 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Now that you mention itt, I actually don't know what that expression means.
I don't know how the exception can prove the rule. I should have just said
that the exception is the socialist city council member in Seattle. But I
don't understand how the exception can prove that a generalization is
correct.
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of R. E. Driscoll Sr
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2015 12:10 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Do 2015 election results show workers moving
to the right?
Miriam:
In my almost 90 years of searching and looking and questioning and posing
various and sundry theories I have not, as yet, found the exceptions or the
rule that is proven.
I am still actively searching. Have no idea of how much time I have left.
R. E. (Dick) Driscoll, Sr.
On 11/15/2015 10:58 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I don't think that most people understand the trans gender issue,
and their
opinions regarding it certainly don't relate to their concerns
about their
economic situation. I can also see how people might respond
positively to a
one on one discussion about capitalism when an organizer comes to
their
door. But I'm not sure that this kind of rational approach can
compete with
the constant barrage of misinformation from the mass media. And, of
course,
often they don't see any immediate reward because the SWP or any
other
alternative party, seldom gets enough votes to actually win an
office. I
know, that there are exceptions to prove the rule.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger
Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2015 11:15 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Do 2015 election results show workers
moving to
the right?
http://themilitant.com/2015/7942/794253.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 42 November 23, 2015
(commentary)
Do 2015 election results show workers moving to the right?
BY SETH GALINSKY
Are workers who are Caucasian becoming more conservative? Do the
off-year
elections show a rightward shift in U.S. politics? Or are working
people
beginning to look for alternatives to crisis-ridden capitalism,
including by
showing interest in the 2015 Socialist Workers Party election
campaigns?
"From Coast to Coast, Conservatives Score Huge Victories in Off-Year
Elections," read the headline of a Nov. 4 article in the Washington
Post.
This was typical of others in several liberal and conservative
publications
that claim this year's mid-term election marked a big shift.
Those articles point to the defeat of Houston's Equal Rights
Ordinance and
to a few races where Republicans defeated Democratic Party
candidates -
mostly ignoring other races where Democrats defeated Republicans -
to make
their case. In fact nationwide there was little change in the number
of
Democrats or Republicans who won office in this round.
It's worth looking at the vote on the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance
- which
would have extended nondiscrimination laws to gay and transgender
people -
to see how far off this analysis is. The ordinance went down to a
crushing
defeat with 61 percent voting no.
But the vote had nothing to do with alleged reactionary views of
workers or
a retreat in the overwhelming sentiment against prejudice and
unequal
treatment based on an individual's gender or sexual orientation.
Instead, the liberal and petty-bourgeois radical supporters of
"political
correctness" sank the proposed law by including in the initial
version of
the bill a clause - later deleted - that said no business open to
the public
could deny a transgender person entry to a restroom consistent with
their
self-proclaimed gender identity.
Conservative opponents of the law took advantage of this to attack
the bill,
including by printing signs proclaiming "No Men in Women's
Restrooms" that
were prominent in working-class and other neighborhoods around the
city.
The defeat of the bill was aided by the Nov. 2 decision of the U.S.
Department of Education that a transgender student in Illinois had
the right
to use female restrooms and locker rooms.
"I got three daughters," Houston city worker Todd Ward told the New
York
Times. "There's not an equal right for me to go into a women's
bathroom.
That's common sense."
Several articles in the Wall Street Journal, including one Nov. 6
headlined
"Has the World Lost Faith in Capitalism?" get a little closer to
what's
happening in U.S. politics today.
To the consternation of the Journal, a "survey found that 55% of
Americans
think the 'rich get richer' and the 'poor get poorer' under
capitalism.
Sixty-five percent agree that most big businesses have 'dodged
taxes,
damaged the environment or bought special favors from politicians.'"
The article reports on a poll in seven countries - the U.S.,
Thailand,
India, Indonesia, Brazil, the U.K. and Germany - that also shows
that people
in the U.S. are "gloomiest about the future. It is new-world
America, where
only 14% of those surveyed think that life will be better for their
children, and 52% disagree."
The liberal capitalist Post comes at the question from a different
angle. A
Nov. 4 article by Harold Meyerson cites a recent study by Princeton
economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case that reports the number of
deaths by
suicide, alcohol use and drug use "among working-class whites ages
45 to 54
has risen precipitously since 1999 - so precipitously that their
overall
death rate . increased by 22 percent."
The Post blames the rise on the "disintegration of the working-class
white
family." The paper notes that "the share of blue-collar jobs in the
U.S.
economy declined from 28 percent in 1970 to 17 percent in 2010,"
while
downplaying the depression conditions that millions of workers in
the U.S.
are facing.
"This helped fuel a racial and nativist backlash that has driven
much of the
white working class (particularly in the South) into Republican
ranks," the
Post asserts. In the eyes of the Post, these so-called uneducated,
alcoholic, drug-saddled workers are the principal reason behind
Donald
Trump's success in the presidential race so far.
Interest in Socialist Workers Party
Socialist Workers Party candidates for mayor and City Council in
Philadelphia and for port commissioner in Seattle have found that
workers
who are Caucasian - just like the rest of the working class - are
being
battered by the capitalist economic crisis, including high
unemployment and
the slashing of wages and benefits over the last several decades.
Workers -
whatever their ethnicity - looking for radical solutions are often
attracted
to Trump and other candidates who profess to tell it like it is or
who rail
against "crony capitalism."
Backers of the Socialist Workers Party have won a hearing at several
Trump
rallies from working people when they explain the problem is not
"crony"
capitalism, but capitalism period. Workers at those rallies were
open to
considering the working-class alternative to the Democrats and
Republicans,
including the SWP's opposition to Trump's program of deporting
immigrant
workers. Workers need to join together in a common struggle, no
matter where
they were born, to fight for raising the minimum wage and for
organizing the
unorganized into unions, the SWP candidates say, on the road to
building a
revolutionary movement capable of taking power out of the hands of
the
capitalist class.
Going door to door in working-class neighborhoods, communist workers
have
gotten a good response to their Marxist explanation of the
capitalist
crisis; the need for working people to organize independently of the
capitalist parties and to fight for a labor party based on the
unions; and
the importance of solidarity with the struggles of working people
and the
oppressed around the world.
Related articles:
SWP campaign in Philadelphia: 'We won because we built the party'
Join defense of SWP exemption from disclosing campaign donors
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
________________________________
Avast logo <http://www.avast.com/> This email has been checked for
viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com <http://www.avast.com/>
