Agreed! And yes, there are more than Three Parties. It's just that
we are herded into selecting between the Two sides of the same coin.
While the Republican Party is in disarray, with many of their
corporate backers actually turning to Clinton, the Democratic Party
has made a clean break with the Working Class, and is now the new
sweetheart of Wall Street.
Indeed, the Democratic Party has established itself as a
Meritocracy(an elite group of people whose progress is based on
ability and talent rather than on class privilege or wealth).
The Working Class is now Party less
Any vote for Clinton will be a vote against the basic needs of the
Working Class.
The Elite Ruling Class has misled the American Working Class into
believing that they have a vote. But actually, we are coming full
circle back to those days when only White Land Holders, will have any
say in the government. Those who believe they must vote for Clinton
in order to keep Trump out of the White House, are simply picking
between War Hawk or Crazy.
We must each make up our own mind, but for me there is no way that I
will endorse this Monster Party, with my vote.
The problem is, I have no hope of seeing enough "outsiders" voting for
a Party that can succeed within our present structure.
One day, when pigs fly, we might get around to bringing these "Banned
Parties" together, and forge a new power base that is effective.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/6/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There is something that annoys me a bit about this article. I am
constantly irritated by the practice of the bourgeois news media of
ignoring all political parties other than Democrat and Republican as if
they don't exist. Well, there are more than three parties too!
http://themilitant.com/2016/8030/803001.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 30 August 15, 2016
(lead article)
‘2016 US election campaign: Three parties and
two classes’
Socialist Workers Party event opens new stage of campaigning
Militant/Ved Dookhun
SWP presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy headed out from New York
meeting to campaign door to door in coal mining region where working
people have been hit hard by layoffs. Above, Kennedy talks with Thomas
Bailey in Westover, West Virginia, Aug. 2.
BY SETH GALINSKY
NEW YORK — “There are three parties in the 2016 elections: the two
imperialist parties, the Democrats and Republicans, and one — the
Socialist Workers Party — that represents the interests of the working
class,” said Norton Sandler at a social event and meeting here July 30
to kick off the SWP’s next 100 days of campaigning.
The speakers were Alyson Kennedy, SWP candidate for U.S. president;
Jacob Perasso, on leave from his job at CSX railroad to run as SWP
candidate for U.S. Senate from New York; and Laurent Sylvestre from the
Communist League in Canada.
More than 35 million people watched the Democratic and Republican Party
conventions and the speeches of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, noted
Sandler, organizer of the Socialist Workers Party in New York, who
opened the program. What they saw was “a spectacle of hypocrisy and
fakery” that tried to cover up the conflicting class realities in the
United States.
“The wealthy propertied rulers make the real decisions in the U.S. —
it’s a dictatorship of capital,” he said.
“The Socialist Workers Party presents the opposite class course. We
point a road forward for working people to take power out of the rulers’
hands. That’s the only way to end this historic, irresolvable crisis of
world capitalism, which is ravaging the living and job conditions of
working people here and around the world.”
Talking with workers across U.S.
“We’re going to campaign aggressively, talking to thousands of workers
on their doorsteps,” Sandler said. A couple dozen people attending had
spent the day campaigning for the SWP from Hicksville, New York, to
Queens and Brooklyn, and Belleville, New Jersey.
The meeting came on the heels of weeks of campaigning in Vermont, Utah
and Tennessee. Party supporters have been going door to door in workers’
neighborhoods in cities where they live and work, as well as joining
efforts elsewhere. A few days after the New York meeting Kennedy was on
her way to West Virginia to talk with coal miners and other workers.
In Washington, Utah, Minnesota and especially Vermont, SWP campaigners
were joined by supporters of the Communist League in Canada.
More than 400 workers they spoke with in Vermont and Utah got the new
book by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, Are They Rich Because
They’re Smart? Class, Privilege and Learning Under Capitalism. “It’s a
wonderful introduction to the Socialist Workers Party,” Sandler said.
He read from a message by a longtime Communist League leader. “The
experience in Vermont was profound,” the message said. What we were
explaining “was outside the electoral framework,” and many were
interested in our view that it’s “through struggle that working people
will gain the confidence to rebuild society in the interests of workers
and farmers. Workers bought Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? on the
basis of discussions like these.”
Among the 75 people attending the New York event were Shelia Reid, a
fighter against police brutality, whose son Jerame was killed by cops in
New Jersey in 2014; Camilo Matos, a leader of the Puerto Rican
Nationalist Party in New York; and Dalton Roberts, a young mechanic who
met party campaigners just a few days earlier at a protest outside the
Democratic Party convention and decided to join them in talking with
workers about the campaign.
The two war parties
The Democratic Party presented itself as a war party at the Philadelphia
convention, said Kennedy. Former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta called for Clinton’s election to send a message that “no one
attacks America and gets away with it.”
Some Bernie Sanders supporters interrupted Panetta with chants of “No
more war!” They were drowned out by shouts of “USA, USA” by other
delegates, many waving “USA” placards printed for the stage-managed
jingoistic event.
Shortly before Clinton’s acceptance speech, retired Marine Gen. John
Allen, who once headed U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, took the
stage with several dozen retired officers and war veterans to endorse her.
“Don’t let anyone tell you that our country is weak,” Clinton said
during her speech.
Trump, Clinton and Sanders “want to make working people think that we’re
all in this together,” Kennedy told the meeting. “Trump says ‘I will
make America great again’ and Clinton says ‘America is already great.’
“But ‘America’ is class divided,” Kennedy said. “Workers have no common
interests with the capitalists. There’s nothing ‘great’ about their
policies and imperialist wars, which target working people here and
abroad.”
Both the Democrats and the Republicans are war parties, Kennedy said.
They’re dedicated to protecting the U.S. rulers’ interests in the wars
Washington has been fighting nonstop for 15 years and others that are
inevitable, spawned by the global capitalist crisis.
Clinton in her speech claimed that “our economy is so much stronger”
than before Obama took office. The auto industry “just had its best year
ever,” she said. “That’s real progress.”
“What world is she living in? And who does she mean by ‘our’ economy,”
asked Kennedy, who joined the United Mine Workers union in 1981 and was
among the first waves of women to work in underground coal mines.
The very day of Clinton’s speech, Kennedy said, Ford Chief Financial
Officer Robert Shanks told the press that “the growth is over.” Ford
plans to accelerate “cost cutting” and slash production and jobs. And
Fiat Chrysler has told the United Auto Workers that unless the union
agrees to concessions, the company will stop building sedans and compact
cars in the U.S.
Trump gets a hearing from many workers because he points to the deep
economic crisis, factory closings, speedup and stagnant wages. “I am
your voice,” he arrogantly boasts to workers.
But Trump’s demagogic scapegoating of immigrants and blaming Muslims for
terrorism are deadly for the solidarity workers need to rebuild our
unions and chart a course toward taking political power, Kennedy said.
Trump, Clinton talk law and order
Trump espouses the law-and-order rhetoric used by former President Bill
Clinton when he signed the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act. That law, backed by Hillary Clinton, instituted “three
strikes and you’re out” sentencing and draconian prison terms for
drug-related charges, expanded the death penalty and added funding for
100,000 more cops on the streets, Kennedy said.
Clinton and the Democrats claim to oppose immigrant- and Muslim-bashing.
But they back the Obama administration’s continued policy of deporting
or jailing tens of thousands of workers without documents every year for
the alleged “crime” of working. The Socialist Workers Party says,
“Organize, unionize and demand no deportations” to unite the working
class — regardless of national origin or religious beliefs.
Under the guise of opposing Trump’s vilification of Muslims, the
Democratic convention featured Khizr Khan, a Muslim immigrant from
Pakistan, whose son Humayun, a captain in the U.S. Army, was one of
thousands of soldiers who died as cannon fodder in Washington’s war in
Iraq.
The Democrats cynically sought to use Khan’s death to bolster the
rulers’ drive toward war, Perasso said. “The Socialist Workers Party
calls for U.S. troops out of the Middle East. And we defend Muslims and
mosques from attacks right here in the U.S.”
Perasso helped organize the campaigning in Vermont in July. “We were
curious whether there would be a different response by working people
there, where Sanders has held elected office since 1981,” Perasso said.
“We found it’s no different. Rents in Burlington, where he was mayor,
are skyrocketing. Many workers can only find part-time jobs, while
others, like rock quarry workers we met, are being forced to work 60
hours a week.”
Occupy in electoral garb
“What’s come to be called the Sanders movement was always really Occupy
in electoral garb,” Perasso said.
By claiming the problem is the 1 percent against the 99 percent, Occupy
takes attention off the class struggle in the U.S. “It was clear at the
convention that Sanders doesn’t control them. He was even booed several
times. The ‘Occupiers’ aim to take over the Democratic Party — and are
making headway.”
The demands of Sanders and Occupy — taxing the 1 percent and campaign
finance reform — have nothing to do with building a working-class party
and mass social movement that fights to organize the unorganized and
oppose imperialism and its wars.
Same crisis in Canada
Sylvestre from the Communist League in Canada spent weeks campaigning in
Vermont, along with another young campaigner from Montreal for a number
of days.
“And just like the Socialist Workers Party, we’ve been going door to
door in Canada,” said Sylvestre, “introducing our party, talking with
our fellow workers, opposing imperialism and its wars.”
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said ‘we’re back’ as an imperialist
power,” Sylvestre pointed out, sending troops to Iraq and selling arms
to Saudi Arabia as it aids U.S. government intervention in the Middle East.
“Working people in Canada face the same crisis as workers in the U.S.,”
he said. “This includes low wages, the proliferation of part-time jobs,
cuts in services, police brutality, speedup and on-the-job injuries.
“We’re looking forward to coming back to campaign with you, and we also
invite you to come to Canada to campaign alongside us,” Sylvestre said.
The working class is an international class, Kennedy said, and the
Socialist Workers Party is an internationalist working-class party. “We
start with the world,” Perasso said. “We look to the Cuban Revolution as
an example of how it’s possible to take power out of the hands of the
ruling rich.”
Perasso and Kennedy will travel to Puerto Rico in September to see
firsthand the conditions in this U.S. colony. They will speak out
against Puerto Rico’s colonial status and for freedom for Oscar López
Rivera, jailed in the U.S. for the last 35 years for his participation
in the fight for independence.
Kennedy will also tour the United Kingdom and France, and running mate
Osborne Hart will visit Australia and New Zealand.
After the Democratic Party convention, Hillary Clinton began a bus tour
through Pennsylvania and Ohio, Kennedy noted. “But she didn’t go to West
Virginia,” where Clinton is hated by coal miners for crowing that she’s
going to close down more coal mines and throw miners out of work.
“The Socialist Workers Party will be going to West Virginia,” Kennedy
said. “But we won’t be riding past working-class neighborhoods on a bus.
We’ll be walking, knocking on workers’ doors.”
“Everywhere we go, we discuss the need to build a powerful workers’
movement,” Kennedy said. “To make a fundamental change by taking
political power out of the hands of the capitalist class. Join us!”
Many participants in the New York event came early for a fine dinner and
stayed afterwards for dessert and discussion. Inspired by the program
and political opportunities in front of the Socialist Workers Party,
they contributed $10,000 to advance its work.
Related articles:
Oppose US imperialist war drive!
‘I’m glad you’re here campaigning for SWP’
Campaign with the Socialist Workers Party
Socialist Workers Party campaign launches $30,000 fund!
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