http://themilitant.com/2016/8043/804301.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 43 November 14, 2016
(lead article)
‘The Socialist Workers Party is your party!’
SWP launches 10-day effort to broaden reach
Militant/Maggie Trowe
Socialist Workers Party member John Benson, right, talks with welder
Denny Chaney, member of Boilermakers union, in front of Chaney’s home in
Memphis, Tennessee, June 4. SWP is putting discussing revolutionary
politics with workers at center of its political activity.
BY MAGGIE TROWE
As the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election comes to a close, the crisis of
both capitalist parties is deepening. Whether Democrat Hillary Clinton
or Republican Donald Trump is elected, the new president will be the
first in U.S. history starting their term distrusted by the majority of
the population.
The election won’t end the widespread discussion and debate among
working people about how to deal with the impact on them of the grinding
economic contraction and financial crisis of capitalism that continues
to unfold.
As this unfolds the Socialist Workers Party is expanding its political
activity in the working class centered on discussion with workers at
their doorsteps about the crisis of the capitalist system, and what
working people can do to fight in their own class interests.
Party members are organizing a special 10-day effort Nov. 3-12 in
cities, towns and rural areas, where they will engage in the widespread
political debate going on among workers. They are explaining how the
crisis facing working people is rooted in the dictatorship of capital
and the need for the working class to fight to take political power.
Party branches nationwide have cancelled Militant Labor Forums for the
weekend before the election to put more time into these door-to-door
discussions with workers.
Interest in a working-class party
The 10-day effort will serve to further place these discussions in the
working class at the center of the ongoing activity of SWP members.
Leaders of the party will travel to cities where there are branches to
help lead in taking advantage of the broad openings among working people
for this kind of discussion, today and in the years to come, about
working-class politics and the fight for socialism.
The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record: Why Washington Fears Working
People by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes is now available (see
excerpt ). It will be an invaluable tool in advancing this discussion
and drawing workers toward the party.
As they knock on workers’ doors, Socialist Workers Party members find
more and more interest in finding an alternative to the bosses’ parties.
“Is that against Clinton?” Jim Kusek asked SWP presidential candidate
Alyson Kennedy when he overheard her explaining The Clintons’
Anti-Working-Class Record in Lomita, California, Oct. 29.
“Yes, both the Democratic and Republican parties are against the
interests of working people,” Kennedy said. “Workers are facing the
effects of the deepening economic crisis. The reason we are having these
problems is because of capitalism. We need to look to our class to chart
a way forward.”
Kusek agreed.
“The working class is the issue in this election,” SWP vice-presidential
candidate Osborne Hart told students at a Vanderbilt University campaign
debate in Nashville, Tennessee, Oct. 24. Others on the panel included
Mary Mancini, chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party; Heather Scott for
the Libertarian Party; and Howard Switzer of the Green Party.
“The capitalist rulers and their representatives like Clinton and Trump
fear us. That’s why Clinton describes us as ‘deplorable’ and
‘irredeemable,’ it’s why Trump seeks to scapegoat and divide us,” he
said. “The system of capitalism which they defend is in a historic
crisis for which they have no solutions.”
Deepening crisis in capitalist parties
When revelations showed Trump joking about groping women and getting
away with it, and when he responded to a firestorm of criticism by
attacking women as “nasty,” his poll numbers fell. Numerous Republican
elected officials said they couldn’t support him. Their party was
fraying at the edges.
The main liberal capitalist media outlets — from the Washington Post to
the New York Daily News — have carried out a relentless hysterical
attack on Trump. But this week their spotlight was on Clinton when FBI
Director James Comey announced the agency would resume a review of the
former secretary of state’s email practices after thousands of emails
were discovered in a separate inquiry into former Democratic Congressman
Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
The Clinton campaign responded by sharp accusations at Comey for trying
to influence the election and having a “blatant double standard” in
investigating Clinton’s emails while refusing to look into alleged Trump
ties with Russia. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to
Comey Oct. 30 accusing him of criminally covering up “explosive
information” about ties between Trump and Moscow.
But the next day President Barack Obama defended Comey as “a man of
integrity.” And Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she continued to
have confidence in him.
This comes on top of continuing evidence that the Clintons — Bill and
Hillary — used public office to increase their wealth and enrich their
family foundation.
The “Occupy Wall Street” wing of the party — led by Vermont Sen. Bernie
Sanders, who had his campaign for the Democratic nomination scuttled by
a dirty campaign led by party leaders, and liberal Massachusetts Sen.
Elizabeth Warren — has moved to increase its influence.
In an Oct. 27 Boston Globe op-ed, Sanders said a new Democratic
administration had to have a treasury secretary “prepared to take on the
greed and illegal behavior of Wall Street, not someone who comes from
Wall Street or will leave office to go to Wall Street.”
Warren sent Obama a letter accusing Securities and Exchange Commission
Chair Mary Jo White of being too close to big business and called for
her ouster.
The divisions in the Democratic Party, and the fights that are coming,
are clear.
With the race tightening, Clinton backers are now saying it really
doesn’t matter if Trump wins the popular vote, because he can never win
in the Electoral College.
Trump has said the election is “rigged.” And it does happen. Study the
history of how then Mayor Richard Daley’s Democratic machine in Chicago
found enough votes in city cemeteries to give John F. Kennedy Illinois —
and the presidency — in 1960.
But whoever wins, the ruling capitalist families will control the White
House. The economic, political and moral crisis of capitalist rule will
deepen. And the burgeoning discussion in the working class about how to
stop the attacks of the bosses and their government, and their expanding
wars abroad, will continue and deepen.
The 2016 election will be history, but the SWP will keep on expanding
the party’s reach, knocking on doors, joining the discussion and showing
by its actions that the SWP is the party the working class needs.
Sam Manuel in Atlanta and Deborah Liatos in Los Angeles contributed to
this article.
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