What more evidence do we need to prove that the Empire's Mass Media
has done a thorough job of confusing Americans to the place where they
rise up against their own best interest.
How else do we explain the idea among Working Class Americans that
some Americans "deserve"such protection and security as livable
retirement, health care, safe working conditions, affordable(free)
education for their children, respectful living wages for their loved
ones, while the majority of Americans must accept a life with few or
none of such benefits?
What is good for the "Corporate First Class Citizen" is good enough
for us all. We have forgotten, under a constant barrage of
propaganda, that we all worked together to create this great nation
and its wealth. Certainly we should demand that we All share equally
in that which we have created.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/21/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2016/8036/803659.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 36 September 26, 2016
(Socialist Workers Party statement)
Fight for health care, retirement for all
The following statement was released Sept. 14 by Alyson Kennedy,
Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president, and Osborne Hart,
SWP candidate for vice president.
We joined thousands of retired and working miners, their families and
supporters as they rallied in Washington, D.C., Sept. 8 to protest
attacks by coal bosses and the government on pensions and health care
for retirees won in past labor battles. The Socialist Workers Party
stands shoulder to shoulder with miners in their efforts to defend their
future.
Tens of millions of other workers — working, unemployed and retired —
face the same challenge, attacks by the bosses and the government on
their right to health care and retirement. This social crisis can’t be
solved boss by boss. Working people, organized and unorganized, need to
join together to fight for full government-funded pensions and medical
coverage as a social right for all.
Cradle-to-grave health care is what all workers need. We can’t let them
be tied to company profitability, nor accept deeper and deeper
government attacks on Medicare and Social Security as the rulers let
their funding run out.
Mine owners and an increasing number of other employers are using
bankruptcy courts to weasel out of union contracts and obligations to
fund retirement benefits and medical care for the workers they exploited
for profits and now try to discard like worn-out machines.
The working class produces all the wealth, as our labor transforms
natural resources into things people need. But under capitalism the
bosses expropriate the lion’s share. They use their wealth and power to
exploit workers here and abroad. The crisis today in their dog-eat-dog
capitalist system is putting increasing pressure on the bosses to cut
away at our wages, pensions, health care and political rights.
“Working people and our unions have a vital stake not only in defending
what we’ve fought for and won from the employing class, but above all in
building a mass social and political movement of the working class to
extend these conquests as universal rights — not means-tested charity —
for all,” Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes
explains in Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege and
Learning Under Capitalism. “Through our labor, the working class, in
this country and worldwide, produces more than enough wealth to provide
education, health care, housing, and retirement to every human being on
earth, for a lifetime.”
We can fight to rebuild our unions to lead all workers in this struggle.
In carrying this fight forward we will transform ourselves. We’ll gain
confidence in our capacity to overthrow the dictatorship of capital,
establish our own workers and farmers government and join the worldwide
struggle for socialism.
Related articles:
Socialist Workers Party: Workers aren’t ‘deplorables’!
Join SWP going door to door! Contribute to campaign fund!
Socialist Workers Party announces $100,000 fund
SWP VP candidate addresses Sydney dockworkers
Coal miners demand gov’t protect health care, retirement benefits
On the Picket Line
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