Good Monday morning. The WCB convention is now behind us, and I'm
clearing some 300 emails from my in-basket. Then it's a busy day
catching up with our clients. But this message caught my fancy, and I
thought I'd take a moment to offer my thoughts. If we focus on
whether to vote or not to vote for Republicans or Democrats, we are
simply allowing ourselves to be caught up in the Establishment's web.
It's the old game of playing "Labels". Shouldn't we be wiser to vote
for those candidates who come closest to defending our Working Class
Interests? Regardless of their label? If we are going to vote, and
there may be good reason to not vote, we should be better served to
ignore labels and campaign hype, and review the actual performance of
each candidate. In this very imperfect Political System, if we're
going to participate at all, we need to remember that there are no
candidates that propose to meet all of the issues faced by the Working
Class. Because the Empire is the Establishment, any candidate with a
chance of winning an election, must find themselves supporting much of
the Empire's needs. I vote for Senators Patty Murray and Maria
Cantwell, knowing that they will only go so far in representing my
issues, but also knowing that they go much further than do any of the
folks running against them. I voted for Bernie Sanders, even knowing
that no member of Congress can have totally clean hands after so many
years in the National Cesspool. I chose not to vote for Hillary
Clinton, even though she might do more for the Working Class than has
Donald Trump. But I knew that voting for either of those candidates
did nothing to protect the sons and daughters of "The American
People". In many ways, our participation in the current elections is
very much like offering each of us the opportunity to throw out the
first pitch in the world series. By doing so, we are endorsing the
legitimacy of the Event, while not having any real role in the game.
Each of us must decide whether or not to play such a role. At times I
do, and at other times I do not. But never, ever do I make that
decision based on Republican or Democratic labels.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/28/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2017/8141/814103.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 41 November 6, 2017
(front page)
‘Don’t vote for either the Democrats or Republicans’
BY MARY MARTIN
“It seems like what happens now is the party that’s elected doesn’t
change anything. Then the other one gets in,” Benito Cruz, one of a
group of farmworkers in Santa Rosa, a city in the heart of California
wine country that was hit hard by recent wildfires, told Socialist
Workers Party members Betsey Stone and Eric Simpson Oct. 22. “Next
election, workers shouldn’t vote for either party. That would show our
power.”
“We need our own party to get change. The Socialist Workers Party is
building a working-class party to fight to take power from the
capitalists,” Stone said. The SWP members had been invited to sit down
and talk outside the farmworkers’ apartment. “Workers have a lot of
potential power. We are a majority. We produce everything, including the
wine.”
“What are you hoping to accomplish here?” another worker asked.
“The Militant newspaper and the books are important to get into the
hands of workers,” Stone said. “They explain that the cause of our
problems is capitalism. That we can do something about it.”
Cruz got a Militant subscription that he said would be shared with other
workers.
Reports like this from party branches, and Communist Leagues in
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, show the open
receptivity to the party and its literature in the working class. This
is the bedrock of the Socialist Workers Party’s fall circulation
campaign, talking to workers on their doorsteps. The nine-week drive is
just past the halfway mark, with four more weeks to go.
Concurrently with the effort to boost the reach of the party’s books and
the Militant, the SWP is organizing to raise $100,000 to finance its
ongoing work.
Sales of five books on special with a subscription are picking up. “We
got rolling on our book sales this week, selling eight books, our
highest number yet in one week,” Anthony Dutrow writes from Miami. “Four
books were sold going door to door. Party member Steve Warshell sold two
of the campaign books to participants in a protest caravan sponsored by
the Alianza Martiana here to oppose new restrictions imposed by
Washington on travel to Cuba by Cuban-Americans.”
The books on special are: Are They Rich Because They're Smart? The
Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record and Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and
the Road to Workers Power, all by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes; Is
Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? by SWP leader Mary-Alice
Waters; and “It’s the Poor who Face the Savagery of the US ‘Justice’
System,” by the Cuban Five, five Cuban revolutionaries who were framed
up and imprisoned in the U.S. for up to 16 years for defending their
revolution.
“We also got our first contribution to the SWP fund from a young worker
we met going door to door,” Dutrow reported. He got a copy of The
Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record, which caught his eye, and said, “I
like what you guys are saying” and gave $5 for the fund.
Members and supporters of the party who work at Walmart are helping use
the drive to lead the party deeper into the working class. From Los
Angeles Bill Arth writes that Rhonda, a co-worker at the Walmart store
where he works, told him she has a young relative who was recently
incarcerated in Washington state, and that prison authorities have made
it hard for the two of them to communicate. She got a copy of “It’s the
Poor Who Face the Savagery of the US ‘Justice’ System,” saying she wants
to understand what was behind their cruelty.
Covers news important to workers
Walmart worker Pat Scott in Federal Way, Washington, told the Militant
that one of her co-workers who picked up a subscription told her he
likes the paper because it “covers the news that’s important to workers,
unlike the TV news.”
Glova Scott in Washington, D.C., described how she and one of her
co-workers went together to see a film on the life of Thomas Sankara.
Sankara led a revolutionary struggle in Burkina Faso and served as the
country’s president from 1983 to 1987. The co-worker renewed her
Militant subscription and bought The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record
and Sankara’s Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle.
“I renewed because I miss reading about what is going on in the world,”
she told Scott. “The Militant goes out to other cities, other states and
other countries and gets the information about what’s happening with the
working class.”
“I visited Deontai Young at his house after work Oct. 20 to speak with
him and his dad,” said Dan Fein from Chicago. “Young got a subscription
a while ago and told me his father often takes the paper to read. His
dad had to leave for work shortly after I arrived, but said on his way
out that he was interested in reading anything from the party. Deontai
and I talked for an hour. He described how the police killed his uncle
eight years ago and how they frustrated efforts by his family to get the
cop indicted.” He got Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to
Workers Power, “It’s the Poor Who Face the Savagery of the US ‘Justice’
System” and Are They Rich Because They’re Smart?
Isabella Graham from Chicago said, “I went to a get-together after work
with some co-workers on Thursday at a nearby coffee house. After we
talked, they got the Workers Power book and Is Socialist Revolution in
the US Possible?
Co-workers boost fund drive
“Thursday was payday. My co-worker at the Walmart store where I work
made the second $10 installment on her $40 pledge to the party fund,”
continued Graham. Earlier in the week, she said, another co-worker got a
Militant sub and a different co-worker contributed $10 to the current
fund drive saying, ‘This is for you and your party.’”
Contributions to the $100,000 party fund from workers on their
doorsteps, from co-workers and co-fighters in union and social protests
are an important component of the drive.
Communist League member Joe Young and Steve Penner, a supporter of the
League in Canada, report they went door to door talking to workers in
Coquitlam on the Lower Mainland, by Vancouver, British Columbia, Oct.
22. Carolle Hall, a single mother looking after a sick child, got a copy
of the Militant and asked them to come back when she had the money for a
subscription. She was attracted to Are They Rich Because They’re Smart?
“No, they’re rich because they’re hoodlums,” she said.
If you would like to help us get Militant subscriptions from your
family, friends and co-workers, and introduce them to the books on
special, or make a donation to the party fund, contact the Socialist
Workers Party office nearest you listed on page 8.
Related articles:
Contribute, raise funds for Socialist Workers Party Fall Fund
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