Cuba is one example. But as many virtues as Cuba has, it has also been
autocratic, although I do understand the reasons. However, because of the power
of money and corporations, Cuba is moving toward a market economy. It could
stay with Communism while the Soviet Union was a power. It began having even
more serious economic difficulties when the USSR no longer existed and Russia
had joined the Capitalist world. It is now opening up to US corporations. What
do you imagine that means in terms of its socialist ideas? But I was actually
thinking mainly of the US where we have seen gains over the past century, but
are seeing them snatched back. I applaud every people's attempt at real change
for the good of masses of people and the environment. And I want to support
every and any move in that direction, whether it be Occupy, Black Lives
matter, or Bernie Sanders' campaign.
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: Friday, February 19, 2016 11:33 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Socialist Action sponsors election debates
If you haven't seen the changes then you just might not be looking in the right
places. Try looking at Cuba, for example.
On 2/19/2016 11:20 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Fact is, the enemy, as you put it, is not just one monolithic force. It's
subtler and more complicated than that. However, I have no problem with
people wanting to change the system for the better. I just haven't seen
evidence that it can be done in the way that Communists think it can be
done. I'm happy with small changes, amelioration of problems. I want things
to be better for a majority of people and I want that to happen as soon as
possible. If a few things can get a little better, that makes me glad. The
more I read, the more I see how complex and intertwined all our systems are
and what a mammoth enterprise it is to make huge, fundamental changes. So,
while I think about lovely huge goals, if I can just see some changes before
my life ends, I'll be hopeful.
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: Friday, February 19, 2016 9:00 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Socialist Action sponsors election
debates
What's the alternative? Voting for the enemy? Collaborating with the enemy to
keep the enemy in power? That doesn't lead anywhere but to keep the enemy in
power. Just how long has it been now that liberals have been urging us to
vote for the enemy and to collaborate with the enemy to keep the enemy in
power? And what has happened? The enemy is still in power.
On 2/19/2016 9:53 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
First of all, there are so many factions in the left that although they talk
about organizing a labor party, they never settle on one because each
faction accuses the other faction of not being politically correct. Second,
they can talk about organizing all they want. The SWP has been doing it for,
God knows how long. Clearly, they are going nowhere when they get perhaps a
few hundred people to a rally. The Green Party, perhaps most understandable
to the mainstream, never even gets on the ballot in all 50 states. People
don't even know who their candidates are. It all reminds me of religious
folk looking foward to going to heaven.
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: Thursday, February 18, 2016 11:48 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Socialist Action sponsors election
debates
I don't know why you don't understand what they see as an alternative to
bourgeois politics. They all keep explaining it over and over. It is to
organize independently of that oppressive system, a labor party for starts.
On 2/18/2016 10:29 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I've read Ford before and, of course, all the others who talk about how
the Democratic Party is not the solution. My problem is that it is never
clear to me, just what precisely they think people should do. How exactly,
do they think we can make change if we cannot use the political system that
is available to us? The fact is, most people don't even know who Jill Stein
is, let alone candidates from other parties.
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: Thursday, February 18, 2016 8:37 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Socialist Action sponsors election
debates
http://socialistaction.org/socialist-action-sponsors-election-debate
s
/
Socialist Action sponsors election debates
Published February 17, 2016. | By Socialist Action.
Feb. 2016 Banner Gloria
By GEORGE BRYAN
— SPECIAL FEATURE: Seven presentations from the debates — Two
Socialist Action-sponsored public forums entitled “Debating the 2016
Presidential Election and the Key Issues of our Time” attracted a total of
250 Bay Area political activists in Oakland and San Francisco over the
weekend of Feb. 4-5.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign in the Democratic Party presidential primaries has
seized the attention of radicalizing youth across the country as well as
that of working people who hold the Wall Street capitalist establishment in
contempt. Sanders’ claim that he is a “socialist” has proved to be no
serious impediment to capturing the imagination of millions who believe in
social equality and despise the government’s ceaseless pandering to the
banks and corporate plunderers.
The two Socialist Action debates provided a unique opportunity for speakers
and their parties to present their views on the Democratic Party and on
working-class alternatives to capitalist politics, including the Sanders
campaign.
Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford joined the panel. His
remarks appear here in full. The debaters representing the Bernie Sanders
campaign were Tom Gallagher, San Francisco president of Progressive
Democrats of America and former member of the Massachusetts House of
Representatives, and Peter Olney, retired ILWU organizing director and
leader of the Labor for Bernie campaign.
Marsha Feinland, vice chair of the California-based Peace and Freedom Party
and four-time candidate for the U.S. Senate, spoke for her ballot-certified
party. Laura Wells represented the Green Party’s Jill Stein for President
campaign. Gloria La Riva, an organizer of the ANSWER Coalition and the
presidential candidate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, also
participated.
Jeff Mackler, National Secretary of Socialist Action moderated the debate
and was a debate participant, stressing opposition to all capitalist
parties and the need for labor-based independent working-class politics as
well as the necessity of united-front-type mass mobilizations to advance
the cause of the oppressed and exploited.
We are printing here excerpts or extended remarks of most of the above
speakers. Technical difficulties, time, and space limitations compelled
Socialist Action to in some cases provide only brief excerpts from some of
them. In some instances, written texts were simply unavailable.
Wherever possible we have provided links to the full remarks of all
speakers or their websites.
Sixteen different organizations set up literature tables during the two
debates. Socialist Action’s popular literature table sold several hundred
dollars of its popular pamphlet series as well as 16 subscriptions to this
newspaper. Three activists asked to join Socialist Action and two dozen
signed up for future Socialist Action forums and classes.
Will Sanders challenge the billionaires?
BY JEFF MACKLER
“Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)” is my
friend Larry Shoup’s latest book (2015) describing in great detail this
ruling-class institution and its multi-billionaire corporate, banking and
intellectual membership. It was founded in 1912 by the world’s richest man,
David Rockefeller of the Chase Manhattan Bank fortune.
Shoup lists virtually all the U.S. ruling class’s multi-billionaire
families. This elite .01 percent, or perhaps .001 percent, make virtually
all decisions in the U.S. regarding critical economic and political
questions.
Not surprisingly, Shoup demonstrates that the U.S. ruling class is
bipartisan, with both Democrats and Republicans partaking in the
decision-making institutions that formulate ruling-class policy. Indeed, a
few years ago The New York Times famously noted that President Bill
Clinton, a CFR member along with Hillary, was “the best representative
corporate America ever had.” Both Clinton and President Obama, to name but
two examples, received more funds from Wall Street and corporate America
for their campaigns than their Republican Party opponents.
To really understand what we’re debating tonight, I ask you to, at least
for the moment, suspend your imagination and have a look at life in
capitalist America through two different lenses. Lens number one is created
for us by the corporate media. We have a democratic choice, we are told,
Bernie or Hillary? Or Bernie v. Trump? Or Hillary v. Trump? or Hillary v.
Cruz, or Rubio, or Jeb Bush or some other reactionary Republican.
The “rebel” Bernie stands for a “political revolution” against the
billionaire class, against Wall Street, against the one percent. He is
against “most” imperialist wars, although our Sanders debaters tonight
honestly state that Bernie is somewhat “weak on foreign policy issues.”
But Bernie is against racism and poverty, for women’s rights, for LGBT
rights, for free public college tuition, for single-payer health care, and
against the environmental destruction associated with global warming. He is
for taxing the billionaire class. “Unprecedented,” we are told.
Are we for or against these intelligent, well-spoken, progressive, sane and
caring Democratic Party human beings or are we for the racist bigot,
warmongering misogynist, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant billionaire moron,
Donald Trump, or his ilk? Isn’t Hillary the prime recipient of corporate
capitalist America’s financial largess? Isn’t Bernie the only candidate
whose funds come in relatively tiny amounts from working people?
All of the above is the projected image of Bernie Sanders looking at
politics through the lens of the world created for us by the corporate
media and its pundits. For you movie buffs, you might recall the Jim Carrey
film called “The Truman Show.” Carrey plays the part of a working man
living on an island where, unbeknownst to Carrey’s character, Truman, the
entire population of his fake community are Hollywood actors. Truman is the
only person on the island, who, has no idea that his entire life, including
his wife and friends, bosses, and hundreds more are actors, scripted by a
Hollywood-type director, who molds Truman’s life, including his phobias and
values, and broadcasts it 24 hours daily on a television show.
To a significant degree, don’t we all live in a “Truman Show” world, where
what we see, learn, and come to believe, and even value, is manufactured
for us by a ruling class that controls most of society’s institutions—from
the media to the educational system, to the puppet politicians. Isn’t it
true that capitalism runs an almost year-round election cycle in which we
are told that everything can change if we simply vote the bad guys out and
the good guys in?
In contrast, let’s have a look at the real world, again, the world where
“liberal” Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, receive the greatest
portion of all corporate campaign money. The “progressive” Democrat Obama,
the first Black president, deported more immigrants, two million, than any
president before him. “The Great Deporter!”
Obama has seven wars to his credit, either ongoing or begun under his
administration—Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen Africa’s
re-colonization wars, drone wars around the world, covert wars, death squad
wars, and privatized army wars. Bernie supported most of these horrors
except Iraq. That war was a “mistake,” he insists. “There were no weapons
of mass destruction.” Yes, friends, the Iraq War was a so-called mistake
wherein the U.S. government murdered 1.5 million people, mostly civilians!
But was it indeed a mistake, or is imperialist war inherent in U.S.
capitalism’s genes?
Bernie Sanders voted for each and every military appropriations bill at
some $1 trillion a clip annually. He backed the racist, Zionist Israeli
slaughter in Palestine and its near dismemberment today from his first day
in Congress. Bernie Sanders’ lifetime voting record has been 98 percent
Democrat!
A few weeks ago, Bernie Sanders met with President Obama, in effect seeking
his support, or at best “neutrality” in his presidential bid. He stated
that he agreed with Obama’s purported military policy of trying to “avoid
placing U.S. troops on the ground in the Middle East.” Sanders failed to
indicate any objection to the 1100 U.S. military bases around the world or
the additional 1000 bases at home, or the fact that half of the troops in
Afghanistan today are non-governmental, privatized death-squad troops like
those that operate globally in covert wars, as is the case today in Syria,
and in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
Bernie Sanders’ calls to tax the billionaire class and for a “political
revolution” are aimed at capturing the powerful anti-establishment
sentiment that permeates society as Congressional approval ratings have
sunk to all-time lows in the range of 12-14 percent. In truth, banks and
corporations, who in essence write the tax codes, avoid most taxes
outright. If there ever was an example of the role of government with
regard to capitalist profits, it was Obama’s unprecedented bailout gift of
$32 trillion to the very corporations whose policies came close to
bankrupting the nation. And working people paid for these corporate
bailouts! The world’s richest corporation, Apple Computer, pays virtually
no taxes!
Bernie’s token tax proposals amount to sheer bluster, as does his notion
that he will lead a “political revolution” to transform the U.S.
financial system. And transform it on the basis of keeping the system of
private property and worker exploitation intact! One might ask whether
Sanders intends to begin his political revolution by eliminating the
one-trillion-dollar annual war budget that funds the military-industrial
complex, or the National Security Administration’s trillions for
surveillance operations, or the $89 billion monthly at near zero interest
rates—the “economic stimulus” or “quantitative easing”
program—that until just a few months ago was gifted to Wall Street banks
and corporate America, who turned around to invest these government
billions in the nation’s casino capitalism financial markets. Sanders is
silent on these matters.
All the evils of today—racism and ever-rising police murder, massive
incarceration of the oppressed, poverty, sexism, union-busting,
never-ending wars, homophobia, anti-immigrant prejudice, skyrocketing
college tuition, environmental destruction, and more—are no accident to be
explained by the faults of this or that president or elected official, but
rather the overt manifestations of a crisis-ridden capitalist society.
What is needed today is not a change at the top or a political revolution
or even a token billionaire tax, but rather a social revolution that ends
the rule and control and ownership of the tiny monopoly finance capital
billionaire ruling class over virtually everything including us.
I am compelled to note that tonight’s pro-Sanders speakers, Tom and Peter,
have been explicit. If Bernie loses the Democratic Party primary contest
Bernie will support Hillary’s candidacy. No matter their “lesser evil”
rationale, this simple fact tells us once again that Sanders’
effort devolves into once again channeling today’s deep discontent at the
insults to our lives that a failing capitalism is compelled to impose, back
into the billionaire Wall Street system itself. For revolutionary socialist
parties like Socialist Action, the road forward excludes choosing between
capitalism’s latest lesser-evil offerings.
I believe that our democratic, open and honest debate will help to advance
future collaboration in the streets and narrow the political gap that
currently divides us on key critical questions.
Feel the Bern!
By PETER OLNEY
Peter Olney and Tom Gallagher both spoke on behalf of the Bernie Sanders
Campaign. Gallagher’s remarks were unavailable for this edition; his
writings can be found at TomGallagerwrites.com. Excerpts from Olney’s
presentation appear below:
Nowhere has there been a more profound effect than in the Labor for
Bernie initiative and the debate within labor. Yes, the usual
suspects SEIU, AFSCME, most of the building trades have lined up
with Hillary without any profound debate or discussion in the ranks.
There’s a sense of inevitability and a fear of retribution! However,
the debate rages, and three significant national unions have
endorsed Bernie—NNU, CWA and APWU—and over 40 locals. …
On the power of the Sanders candidacy within the Democratic primary:
He has taken the Primary Route and so should we. It’s Bernie, and
the fact that he has labeled himself a socialist is great for our cause.
…
He is espousing views that unions espouse 364 days a year—economic
inequality, rapacious Wall Street pillagers of the economy—but then on
election day they advise their members to vote the “lesser of two evils,”
not an irrational choice given that elections have consequences for labor
and labor law, the environment, and peace.
Bernie’s run within the Democratic Party primaries puts him on Main Street,
in the debates, and he is not a spoiler. We go all out for Bernie win or
lose and then we settle for whoever emerges from the process as our
candidate against the racist, xenophobic candidate of the GOP!
But we are trapped, you say, voting forever for a candidate of a corporate
party. It was Tony Mazzochi [former head of the Oil and Atomic Workers
union] who said: Business has two parties, we need our own—a Labor Party.
True enough, but politics is the art of getting from A to B.
This is the challenge for the legions of labor for Bernie supporters and
the challenge we must discuss and confront, not whether to support Bernie
in the primaries—that is a must—but how to take the energy and organization
coming out of the campaign to create a permanent and ongoing organization
and movement.
To that end, discussions are underfoot to cement a permanent alliance of
the national unions that have endorsed Bernie and the locals that endorsed
him to stay together past the primaries, the convention, the general
election and even the White House to continue to carry out a political
strategy that takes the primary route in federal, state, and local
elections. That engages in non-partisan elections at the most basic level,
and that unites with other forces in the communities of color, immigrant
communities, and with other political formations like Working Families
Party and Move On to build an alternative political pole, and maybe one day
a Socialist Party in this country.
After all, who wants to die a Democrat! FEEL THE BERN!
Blacks and the Democratic Party
By GLEN FORD
Glen Ford is an executive editor of Black Agenda Report. His presentation
to Socialist Action’s Feb. 5 and 6 forums was closely based on a recent BAR
article, which is excerpted here with permission of the author.
Blacks in the South will probably not vote for Bernie Sanders, although
they most resemble the “Scandinavian social democrats” of Sanders’
dreams. However, Black voters don’t express their politics through the
ballot. Rather, Blacks are drawn into the jaws of the Democratic Party, not
by ideological affinity, but in search of protection from the Republicans.”
It is the politics of fear.
Bernie Sanders has succeeded in stalling the Clinton juggernaut in Iowa,
and is expecting a resounding victory next week in New Hampshire.
However, the euphoria will fade as his supporters confront the likelihood
that their quest to transform the Democratic Party “from below” will be
derailed in the South by Blacks, who are the decisive bloc, or outright
majorities, in the region’s Democratic primaries, and who make up about a
quarter of the Party’s support, nationwide.
It is a great paradox that the Sanders campaign will almost certainly be
rejected by the very voters whose fundamental political leanings are most
closely aligned with the “Scandinavian social democratic” model on which
Sanders has based his career.
Black voting behavior over the past two generations all but guarantees they
will back the national Democratic candidate they perceive as most likely to
defeat the Republicans—the “White Man’s Party.” White supremacy and the
rule of capital in the U.S. are buttressed, electorally, by two pillars:
(1) the bifurcation of the major party system into a White Man’s Party,
whose organizing principle is white supremacy, and another party that is
somewhat more inclusive of Blacks and other “minorities,” and (2) control
of both parties by capital.
For Blacks, the Democratic Party is a trap within a trap. If the
overarching, perceived necessity is to block the Republican/White Man’s
Party at every electoral juncture, then Blacks see no option but to huddle
under the Democratic tent, despite the fact that it is, like the
Republicans, a Rich Man’s Party.
It is a politics of fear, born of generations of raw terror at the hands of
the White Man’s Party. The modern Democratic Party, like the post-Civil War
Republican Party, is not a haven, but an enclosure, which Blacks fear to
exit. At root, Black participation in the Democratic Party is not a matter
of free allegiance, but the perception that there is no other effective
means to hold back the barbarians of the White Man’s Party.
In practice, it is institutionalized group panic, a stampede every four
years. Blacks are drawn into the jaws of the Democratic Party, not by
ideological affinity, but in search of protection from the Republicans.
This is an entirely different dynamic than an alignment based on
thoughtful examination of political platforms. …
Under these stilted circumstances, the Democratic candidate’s actual
political positions become near-irrelevant to the Black primary voter,
compared to the candidate’s perceived ability to win a national election.
When the voter is seeking protection from what is seen as the greater, more
racist evil, rather than searching for a candidate and party that takes
positions more aligned with the Black political world view, independent
politics goes out the window. Indeed, independent, leftist electoral
campaigns can be viewed as a going AWOL from the fight, or worse,
collaborating with the Republican enemy.
Blacks voted for Jesse Jackson in his 1984 and ’88 primary campaigns, but
he opted out of an independent run for president, preferring to remain in
the role of “power broker” within the Democratic enclosure.
It’s not likely that Black voters would have supported Jackson in an
independent race, anyway.
When Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter from the Left, in 1980, his
effort collapsed largely from lack of support from Black elected
officials, who stuck with the Georgia peanut farmer even after he
had shown himself to be a deeply conservative politician (a founding
“neoliberal”) whose austerity policies opened the door to Ronald Reagan.
The Black Radical Tradition is real and enduring, but it is not expressed
through participation in the Democratic Party. Rather, entrapment in the
Democratic Party enclosure (within the larger Rich Man’s duopoly)
grotesquely warps Black political behavior. This distortion profoundly
diminishes the prospects for progressive electoral activity in the United
States.
It is true that the Democrats would collapse were it not for the Black core
of the party. It is also probable that that would be a good thing.
What is certain is that the Democratic Party oozes out of every orifice of
Black civic society like a stinking pus, sapping the self-determinist
vitality of the people and transforming every Black social structure and
project into a Democratic Party asset.
The task of Black activists and their allies is to ensure that our first
and last hope—movement politics—once again becomes central to the struggle,
so that we can, as Dr. Cornel West puts it, “break the back of fear.” This
will require the most intense internal struggle among Black Americans to
break the chains that bind us to that vector of fear, the Democratic Party.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen
Ford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
For socialism
The presentation by Gloria La Riva, presidential candidate of the Party for
Socialism and Liberation, was not available as we went to press. The
following statement is from her campaign website: www.votepsl.org.
“Capitalism is a corrupt, bankrupt system that is destroying the
environment while the super-rich accrue obscene wealth,” stated Gloria La
Riva. “The capitalist bankers torched the economy and the federal
government bailed them out with our money. What an outrage! Today the
criminal bankers are richer than ever while millions of working people have
been plunged into poverty.
A socialist system shatters this destructive model. Socialism means that
the wealth of society, all of which was created by the labor of working
people, would be used to create a sustainable environment while providing
every person with a decent job or an income for those who can’t work, free
education and affordable housing.
Socialism means making health care truly affordable by making it free for
all people. The military-industrial complex and the Pentagon war machine,
with its 1,000 bases around the world, are not for ‘defense’
but for Wall Street’s global empire. It should be dismantled. Massive
military production is a complete waste and should be converted to useful
civilian production.”
Defeat the two-party system
By MARSHA FEINLAND
I was invited here to speak for the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for
president. There are four candidates seeking the presidential nomination of
The Peace and Freedom Party: Gloria LaRiva of the Party for Socialism and
Liberation, who is one of the panelists; Lynn Kahn, an independent , who is
in the audience; Monica Moorehead of the Workers’
World Party; and Jill Stein, of the Green Party. I am not
representing any particular candidate. I speak as a member of the
Peace and Freedom Party, which is the only party on the ballot in
California that advocates for socialism. …
Every four years, trade unionists and other usually dependable
class-struggle fighters devote their energy to supporting and working for a
Democratic Party presidential candidate. They act on their fear of the
increasingly grotesque Republican Party. The Republican Party becomes the
force that dominates the political landscape as the “leaders” of the
working class call any effort to build a working-class party “unrealistic,”
and support for the Democrats “imperative.” So we end up on the
never-ending see-saw of one capitalist party or the other in charge.
The only way to defeat the Republicans is to defeat the two-party system.
What about the “good” Democrats? The ones in Congress who support the
Conyers health care bill (a Medicare-for-All bill originally introduced by
Ron Dellums), and the Progressive budget, an impressive document that
provides everything a good welfare state should. Can’t we take over the
Democratic Party and make it our party?
No. While the “good” Democrats keep working-class and well meaning
people voting for them, their policy documents never go anywhere.
The dominant forces in the party prevail. Here is a short list of
what their
achievements: They didn’t filibuster Bush’s Supreme Court appointments;
They didn’t contest the 2000 elections; They bailed out the banks and let
the homeowners get foreclosed on; They do not significantly tax the rich;
They will not give us a decent health care system; They are dismantling our
public schools (note that liberal Democrats George Miller and Ted Kennedy
helped author the No Child Left Behind Act); They promote extraordinary
police and surveillance powers; And they perpetuate the war machine.
The Democratic Party is a ruthless enforcer, destroying its own when
necessary! In 1934, Upton Sinclair, a socialist, won the Democratic Party
primary for governor of California. His program was called End Poverty in
California, and EPIC clubs sprang up all over the state. But the Democratic
Party establishment, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Hollywood and the press,
refused to endorse Sinclair and ensured a Republican victory. There is no
reason to believe that the Democratic Party is now ready to take on the
socialist mantle.
It is easy to feel hopeless and demoralized. The task of building an
independent party of the working class seems daunting. But we can look at
some emerging movements for encouragement. Significant portions of Occupy,
the living wage campaign, the environmental movement, anti-eviction
defenders, and the struggle against police violence and mass incarceration
all are taking on an anti-capitalist stance.
We need to join the growing movements. We need to connect our political
theory with the real struggles on the ground. We need to put aside
sectarianism and work together. We can build a workers’ party. We can and
we have to.
What will Sanders’ supporters do when he endorses Clinton?
By LAURA WELLS
It is fitting that I am representing Jill Stein [and the Green Party].
Many people have come up to me and said, “I know who you are! You’re Jill
Stein!” No, but thank you. Jill and I have something in common. We were
both arrested outside debates for offices for which we were candidates,
presidential and gubernatorial.
The specific charge against me in 2010 when I ran for governor was a crime
I was absolutely committing—guilty as charged: “trespassing at a private
party.” Jill Stein is working to make it a “public party.” Her campaigns in
2012 and already in 2016 have helped to smash a chink in the armor of the
private parties, and helped make debates and elections more public.
The big question about the 2016 election is the following: “What are the
supporters of Bernie Sanders going to do when the Democratic Party does not
nominate him?”
The institution of the Democratic Party has very different values from the
people who register as Democrats and who vote for Democrats, and that
institution has all the power it needs to push Bernie to the side.
They instituted super-delegates who will not be on Bernie’s side,
and they have big media. …
So, what are Bernie Sanders’ supporters going to do when he endorses the
Democratic nominee, likely Hillary? She is the embodiment of all the lousy
domestic values Bernie has been attacking so effectively. … People power
means we can organize in solidarity and take to the streets.
People power also means we can vote, and change our voter registrations.
Yes, voting is important. That’s why they change laws and elections
to create more hurdles and restrictions for voters and for
independent political parties. …
Here is my recommendation if you are feeling the Bern. … AFTER THE PRIMARY,
change your voter registration to an independent party, like the Green
Party or Peace and Freedom. … A majority of people want strong parties
outside of the Democratic-Republican Party. Here’s how third parties get
strong: you vote for them, and you register in them.
IN NOVEMBER, VOTE, but do not write in Bernie Sanders! He is not a
movement, he is an individual. We can use as building blocks what
Bernie has brought to the table, like injecting the term “socialism”
back into our national dialogue. What this country needs now are
organizations, including political parties that serve as the
electoral arm of the social movements, that take no corporate money,
and that are not controlled by the 1%. …
You may see the small parties as imperfect, but to blame third parties for
their weakness is like blaming poor people for their poverty. Yes, we’re
imperfect and make mistakes, but it’s the system that makes people poor and
independent political parties weak. People power makes us strong, and
breaks up the two-party system that has given control of our government to
the 1% and their corporations.
IN NOVEMBER, DO NOT VOTE DEMOCRAT. Glen Ford’s description of Obama
as the more “effective evil” rather than the “lesser evil” is right
on point. Sometimes it takes a Democrat to accomplish a conservative
agenda, like bailing out Wall Street, and implementing trade
agreements like NAFTA and the TPP/Trans-Pacific Partnership. …
Already in 2016 Jill Stein’s campaign is ahead of the game on multiple
fronts. Many people who had put their hearts and souls into Obama’s 2008
campaign are working with her to see how much headway the electoral arm of
the movement can make this year.
In summary, 2016 is a great year to work together to use all the power we
have. Let’s not give our money to the 1% and their corporations—as much as
we can avoid it! And let’s not give them our voter registrations and our
votes.
Photo: Gloria La Riva, presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism
and Liberation, speaks in Oakland on Feb. 4. Seated at left is Jeff
Mackler, National Secretary of Socialist
Action. By Nick
Brannon / Socialist Action
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Posted in Elections, Marxist Theory & History, San Francisco Bay Area. |
Tagged Bernie Sanders, Democrats, Glen Ford, Greens.
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