He sounds like a good possibility for my vote if Sanders doesn't get the
nomination. But there's also a Green Party candidate who's a possibility. I'd
actually like to know more about mackler's background and qualifications.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Sunday, July 07, 2019 10:28 AM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Jeff Mackler for U.S. president in 2020: Socialist
Action campaigns for socialism
https://socialistaction.org/2019/07/06/jeff-mackler-for-u-s-president-in-2020-socialist-action-campaigns-for-socialism/
Jeff Mackler for U.S. president in 2020: Socialist Action campaigns for
socialism
/ 17 hours ago
Aug. 2016 Jeff smilingBy NICK BAKER
Twenty-four Democrats faced off during two nationally televised ???debates???
last month, each armed with a few stock phrases they hoped would instantly
boost their poll ratings and associated capacity to win additional tens and
hundreds of millions of dollars sufficient to defeat Donald Trump for the U.S.
presidency. The combined 2020 presidential election expenditures are expected
to exceed the record $6.7 billion spent in 2016.
The competing Democrats all began their campaigns with the unstated premise
that the racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-working class, crisis-ridden,
environment-destroying imperialist capitalist system can be tweaked a bit to
improve the lives of millions by replacing the crudely reactionary Donald Trump
with one of their own.
Bernie Sanders set the tone and parameters of the contest months earlier with
his pledge to support whichever of the contestants emerged victorious at the
end of the primary season???that is, anyone but Trump.
Sanders, robbed of a victory in 2016 when Hillary Clinton???s team, which then
controlled the Democratic Party apparatus and finances, stacked the deck
against him, nevertheless dutifully followed the rules and went to the
Democratic Party Convention podium to endorse her campaign.
Capitalism cannot be reformed
In sharp contrast, Socialist Action???s 2020 presidential election campaign is
based on the stated premise that rapacious capitalism cannot be reformed, that
its history of endless wars, environmental devastation, economic crises and
human degradation is inherent in the functioning of the system itself.??
???That system,??? said Jeff Mackler, Socialist Action???s 2020 presidential
candidate, ???cannot be reformed. It must be fundamentally replaced by the
collective action of the majority of the nation???s working masses in the
course of a socialist revolution.
Building every social struggle that today challenges capitalism???s innate
drive to profit regardless of the cost in human lives and social wellbeing is
our priority.
???We will win in this consciously orchestrated period of pseudo-democracy, in
which billionaires compete against each other, not at the rigged ballot boxes
and debates controlled by the parties of the one percent and their liberal
cheerleaders today rushing to mobilize their constituencies to ???Defeat
Trump??? in 2020, but rather by winning the hearts, minds, and direct
participation of working people in the vital struggles that effect them
directly.???
Socialist Action at the Left Forum
Mackler???s assertions above were sharply disputed during the course of a June
30 Socialist Action-sponsored Left Form panel debate at Long Island
University???s campus in Brooklyn, N.Y., entitled ???How Will the Left Vote in
the Presidential Election???? Socialist Action supporters distributed thousands
of campaign flyers during the course of the weekend conference. Mackler???s
panel opponents, Manhattan Green Party Chair and WBAI co-host of ???La Voz
Latina??? Daniel Vila, and South Florida Bernie Sanders organizer and co-chair
of 350 South Florida Jack Lieberman, argued that Green Party election campaigns
could pressure the Democrats to make important reforms or, in the case of
Lieberman, a Sanders victory, if not a victory for any Democrat, was critical
to stopping the ???fascist-minded Trump??? and his mass following of
???right-wing nationalists and racist bigots.???
Lieberman???s portrayal of the U.S. as being confronted by a Trump-led fascist
onslaught, if not a military coup, was employed to desperately urge a Sanders
election victory. Sanders??? election, he implied, would represent a bulwark of
continued [capitalist] stability as opposed the fascist barbarism promoted by
Trump!
With regard to literally every presidential election contest over the past 70
years and longer, liberal capitalist apologists have argued that only a
Democratic Party victory could prevent the rise to power of the ???fascist
Republicans.??? In classical ???lesser evil??? style, Daniel Vila defended a
widely circulated Green Party position paper at the Left Forum entitled ???Cut
the War Budget for a Green New Deal,??? which stated, ???The U.S. military
budget is 3 times that of Russia and China???s combined and therefore can be
cut in half without sacrificing national security???
(emphasis in original).
Mackler countered by calling for a 100 percent cut in the trillion-dollar
annual U.S. military budget. He added, ???There are no U.S. ???national
security interests??? that Socialist Action defends. These are nothing less
than U.S. capitalism???s justification for endless wars for oil and other
resources, witch-hunting assaults on its most effective critics, and ongoing
persecution of immigrants who are forced to flee their own countries that have
been systematically exploited and decimated by the U.S. imperial policies of
the corporate elite.???
Mackler was also a panelist or active participant in the discussions at Left
Forum panels on the Ukraine and on Venezuela, both sponsored by the United
National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). The Ukraine panel featured several speakers
who had recently visited Ukraine and who were engaged in various efforts to
defend Odessa Ukrainians and others who have been subjected to the violence,
murder, and persecution emanating from the U.S.-backed 2014 fascist-led coup
government.
In addition to Mackler, panelists included UNAC National Co-coordinator, Joe
Lombardo and Pippa Bartolotti, both having recently visited Odessa as apart of
an international solidarity delegation, Ukrainian activist Maria Zakharova and
Phil Wilyato, who has headed up the annual U.S.
national solidarity efforts to commemorate the fascist attacks and murder of 43
Ukrainian dissidents who opposed the fascist-led coup. The panel offered a
bird???s eye view of the terror unleashed by government-promoted armed fascist
forces. ???In Ukraine today,??? panelist Zakharova reported, oppositionists
have every reason to fear for their lives. In the face of armed fascist gangs
they have no alternative than to operate underground.???
UNAC???s Venezuela panel, among the largest at the Left Forum, attracted over
60 antiwar activists and featured participants in a recent U.S.
fact-finding delegation to Venezuela as well as Kevin Zeese, a central leader
of the Embassy Protection Coalition that for 34 days and at the request of the
Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro defended the Washington, D.C. embassy
against U.S. government and right-wing Venezuelans who insisted that the
U.S.-anointed Juan Guaido was the ???legitimate??? president of Venezuela.
Zeese and three other embassy protectors were subsequently arrested and face
felony charges of ???interfering with government functioning??? that carry with
it heavy fines and potential imprisonment.
Bahman Azad, a leader of the recent U.S. delegation to Venezuela and the U.S.
Peace Council, announced the formation of a Committee to Defend the Venezuelan
Embassy Protectors. Socialist Action???s Jeff Mackler is among the 21 defense
committee initiators. A surprise participant at this UNAC panel was
Venezuela???s representative to the United Nation???s Mission in New York,
Daniela Rodriquez, who reviewed the plight of the Venezuelan people as they
courageously faced the monstrous U.S. embargo, sanctions, and repeated
U.S.-orchestrated coup attempts.
Mackler, a member of UNAC???s national administrative committee, and based in
the San Francisco Bay Area, proposed a West Coast fall fundraising tour of
Zeese and other embassy protectors. Zeese heartily agreed, as did Rodriquez,
who explained that her participation had to be via SKYPE because U.S.
restrictions, as with those imposed on Cuba???s UN diplomats, bar Venezuelan
officials from travel outside a 25-mile radius from New York City.
Socialists banned from election debates
While today???s polls, conducted by organizations ranging from the Pew
Organization to Gallop and the New York Times, indicate increasing popular
support to socialist ideas???a majority in regard to youth under
30 years old???socialists are routinely banned from nationally-televised
debates as the corporate pollsters list only candidates of their own parties as
choices offered to those being polled.
The ???equal time??? laws of the 1970s???wrested from the government by the
massive civil rights, anti-Vietnam War, and free speech movements???have long
ago been obliterated, along with the fiction that the major media were unbiased
and open to multiple viewpoints. Today???s media, ever fearful of mass
movements that expose government lies, with few exceptions publish only
???news,??? often filtered through government channels, including the FBI and
CIA, that they deem ???fit to print.??? The same holds for the myriad of
NGO-backed or Democratic Party-funded social and political organizations.
Last month, for example, the Democratic Party-oriented Poor People???s Campaign
headed by the Rev. William Barber sponsored a Washington, D.C.,
???non-partisan??? full-day presidential debate wherein a dozen competing
Democrats were invited. Socialist Action???s Jeff Mackler applied for inclusion
in this event, and especially so since it was billed to press forward the Poor
Peoples??? Campaign priorities for social justice and against ever-increasing
military expenditures. Mackler was excluded, as he was from Amy Goodman???s
Democracy Now! radio program, which periodically features Democratic Party
advocates and supporters.
Mackler appears on Election 2020: Meet the Candidates
A rare exception to the exclusion of socialists from public debates was
Mackler???s July 26 one-hour podcast presentation on ???Election 2020: Meet the
Candidates,??? billed by its libertarian host Paul Duddridge as the ???fastest
growing 2020 candidates podcast in the US.???
(https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/2020-election-meet-the-, an extredme ;
example candidates/id1456951992?mt=2)
Duddridge, an extreme example of a pro-capitalist, free-trade, ???economic
nationalist,??? an advocate of no government interference in any aspect of
human endeavor, and a Trump supporter who believes that the current president
exemplifies these qualities, nevertheless features on his podcasts dissident
Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarian Party members, with whom he jousts to
present his ideas, all essentially in defense of ???free market??? capitalism
as opposed to the ???socialism??? that he sees ever encroaching on
???freedom??? in present day America. Mackler???s debate with Duddridge, edited
by Duddridge to highlight his own views and undercut Mackler???s, is
nevertheless noteworthy not because it is likely to reach a broad audience but
rather because it provided a limited opportunity for a socialist to express
some fundamental revolutionary propositions.
At the conclusion of the debate, Duddridge asked rhetorically, ???What would
you do on your first day in office as president of the U.S.????
Mackler, in summary, responded: ???I would empty the prisons where the U.S.
incarcerates the largest number and percentage of its population of any nation
on earth. Ninety percent of those imprisoned are there for non-violent crimes
driven by a capitalist system that deprives the poor and oppressed of any
opportunity to live decent lives. I would provide quality health care for those
in need of it???Rehabilitation not Mass Incarceration! I would close all 1100
U.S. military bases around the world and spend the trillion-dollar annual war
budget to rebuild our schools and pubic education system.
???I would immediately institute free socialized medicine for everyone. I would
fundamentally change the present transportation system, quickly ban fossil fuel
production by nationalizing the energy industry and placing it under workers???
control to organize a just transition to a sustainable fossil free society,
reforest the earth, ban all restrictive racist voting laws, end all
discrimination against LGBTQI people, end all discrimination against
transgender people, end all discrimination based on sex and gender preferences,
institute a woman???s right to free abortion on demand, support the right to
self-determination of all oppressed people to be free from imperialist colonial
wars and intervention, eliminate heinous mortgages imposed on working people,
cancel all student debt, nationalize all banks and major corporation under
workers??? control, provide free quality food for all in needs and thus begin
the revolutionary transformation of capitalism to a socialist society where the
full satisfaction human needs, not capitalist profits are first and foremost
among our priorities.???
A surprised Duddridge replied, ???And what will you do on Day Two????
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July 6, 2019 in Vote Socialist Action.
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