That's true. Changing the System is truly a mammoth task. But it's
either that, or we continue our downward spiral.
I'm not smart enough to know how it can happen, but I do know some
things that will prevent it. Foremost is our attitude toward wealth.
We have been so conditioned to lust after just a bit more material
wealth than we currently have, without analyzing how such an attitude
effects our perspective. I remember when I was about 16 years old.
I'd joined the MYF(Methodist Youth Fellowship). I'd joined when I
noticed that there were about 15 young girls and maybe 3 guys. But
that's another story. I was talking to the church pastor about my
desire to be of service to others. "After I make a million dollars",
I told him in all sincerity, "my second million will all go to help
the poor".
While it's true that charity begins at home, so does greed. And
sometimes it's hard to tell one from the other.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/16/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
And given our laws and how they and the financial elites support our present
two party system, electing a third party candidate is a pipe dream. I hear
lots of people on the left who want to change the system, and there are a
number of different ideas about how to do it. There's a lot of organizing
going on via social media and podcasts, but I don't know whether it reaches
the majority of working class people. Given the complexity of our system,
making change is a mammoth task.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2020 11:04 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] ALYSON KENNEDY, SWP
CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT:,‘Workers need our own party, a labor party’
Building a strong Working Class party is the logical solution. But of
course, that calls for involvement and some sacrifice of time and energy.
Our Capitalist System enables the Boss to delegate his work, giving him time
as well as money and connections, to become involved in politics.
We see examples of socialists elected to lower offices, such as the Seattle
City Council, and making progress in social reform. But electing a
socialist as president without strong support in Congress, would be like
playing Russian Roulette with a gun loaded with five bullets.
However, since socialism has been around as long as democracy, it is not
appearing to be catching on.
Capitalism has the advantage of setting the rules to the political arena.
Money is the main tool. And unfortunately, the Working Class has been
robbed so often that they simply hand over their money with barely an
objection, not even understanding that the United States is as much a Class
System as is India.
.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/16/20, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
https://themilitant.com/2020/02/15/workers-need-our-own-party-a-labor-
party/ ALYSON KENNEDY, SWP CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT:
‘Workers need our own party, a labor party’
article
BY GEORGE CHALMERS
Vol. 84/No. 7
February 24, 2020
MILITANT/GEORGE CHALMERS SWP presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy
talks with auto mechanic Rogelio Rodriguez at his home in Dallas Jan. 24.
Working people
need to break with the capitalists’ parties, she said. figure SWP
presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy talks with auto mechanic Rogelio
Rodriguez at his home in Dallas Jan. 24. Working people need to break
with the capitalists’ parties, she said.
MILITANT/GEORGE CHALMERS SWP presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy
talks with auto mechanic Rogelio Rodriguez at his home in Dallas Jan. 24.
Working people
need to break with the capitalists’ parties, she said. figure end
DALLAS — The two main capitalist parties, the Democrats and
Republicans, are in crisis, Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party
candidate for president, told participants in a campaign rally here
Feb. 8. And, she said, more and more workers are concluding that
neither the Democratic or Republican parties are on the side of
working people.
MILITANT/SUSAN LAMONT Malcolm Jarrett, right, SWP candidate for vice
president, visits Reggie Jackson in Hogansville, Georgia, Oct. 1.
Jackson got campaign
book Tribunes of the People and the Trade Unions. figure Malcolm
Jarrett, right, SWP candidate for vice president, visits Reggie
Jackson in Hogansville, Georgia, Oct. 1. Jackson got campaign book
<em>Tribunes of the People and the Trade Unions.</em> MILITANT/SUSAN
LAMONT Malcolm Jarrett, right, SWP candidate for vice president,
visits Reggie Jackson in Hogansville, Georgia, Oct. 1.
Jackson got campaign
book Tribunes of the People and the Trade Unions. figure end Kennedy
explained that she, SWP vice presidential candidate Malcolm Jarrett
and over 20 SWP candidates coast to coast are campaigning on the need
for workers to have our own party, a labor party, based on our unions.
“One of the ways the wealthy class maintains its rule has always been
its use of the two-party — or more — system,” Kennedy said. “If you
don’t like what one capitalist politician is doing, they tell you to
vote for another capitalist politician from the other party in the
next election.
“The 2016 election showed that the capitalist rulers can’t depend on
this anymore,” she said. “More workers said, ‘He’s worse, she’s worse,’
and that has
the capitalist class worried.
“More and more workers sense the dead-end of lesser evil politics,”
Kennedy told the Militant in an interview a couple days later. “But
it’s not immediately apparent to them what the alternative is. What
workers need in the political arena will grow out of our experiences
fighting to defend our wages and working conditions, for our social
and political rights, against the capitalist rulers’ wars abroad.
“Through these battles we’ll transform and rebuild our unions, and
transform ourselves, deepening our self-confidence and class
consciousness,” she said.
“We’ll learn the burning necessity of constructing our own political
party, with a program to take power out of the hands of the capitalist
exploiters.
“A labor party can unite and mobilize all those who are exploited and
oppressed by capital, the vast majority,” she said.
“We don’t have a dog in the race for which Democrat or Republican gets
elected in 2020,” Kennedy told the rally. “Join with the SWP campaign
to fight for our own party, a labor party, to organize a class
struggle for power.”
Not a ‘vote-catching machine’
A labor party would need a program that raises the same kinds of
demands that the Socialist Workers Party is promoting in its 2020
campaign platform.
“The SWP campaign program says our unions need to fight for workers to
take control of production,” she said. “That’s how workers can defend
ourselves on the job at the same time as we learn how the working
class is capable of organizing the economy itself, of replacing the
bosses and their government, and of running society ourselves.
“Think what this would have meant if Boeing workers had conquered
control of building and testing the Boeing 737 MAX plane!” she said.
“Workers control of production would enable us to deal with the
questions of industrial pollution of the atmosphere that contributes
greenhouse gases and other contamination,” Kennedy pointed out. “It is
only the working class that is capable — and has the class interests —
to defend our land, air and waters.
The defense of science and culture, of everything important to
humanity, falls to the working class.
“All of that would point in the direction of working people forming
their own labor party, fighting to put a workers and farmers
government in power,”
Kennedy said.
Open door to Israel-Palestine talks
During the discussion at the forum, Kennedy was asked what the
campaign’s view is of the Trump administration’s recently announced
Middle East peace proposal.
She encouraged participants to read the December 2017 Socialist
Workers Party statement, “For Recognition of a Palestinian State and
of Israel.”
“This is a very important opening for working people in the Middle
East and worldwide,” Kennedy said. “It should be grabbed by the
Israeli and Arab governments and the leaderships of the Palestinian
organizations to open serious negotiations.”
“These negotiations,” she said, “would have to recognize, as our
statement points out, ‘the right of Jews everywhere to take refuge in
Israel in the face of the global rise of Jew-hatred and anti-Semitic
violence, as well as the unconditional right of the dispossessed
Palestinian people to a contiguous, sovereign homeland on territory —
including East Jerusalem — conquered and occupied by the Israeli
government during the 1967 war.”
There have been no negotiations for decades, she said, a result of
anti-working-class leaderships there.
“The Palestinian people deserve a leadership that takes the moral high
ground,” she said. “The U.S. proposal as it stands would leave the
Palestinian state looking like a gerrymandered U.S. congressional
district. But what could emerge from serious negotiations would have
to recognize today’s realities. This could open the road to the fight
for two viable states.”
Our starting point, as the SWP statement makes clear, Kennedy said, is
“the class interests and solidarity of workers and toiling farmers
across the Middle East — be they Palestinian, Jewish, Arab, Kurdish,
Turkish, Persian or otherwise, and whatever their religious or other
beliefs — as well as working people in the United States and around
the world.”
Participants at the meeting contributed $450 for the national SWP
campaign.
SWP Campaign Coupon
Click here
to email Socialist Workers Party 2020 Campaign.
article end
list of 3 items
Share
list end
RELATED ARTICLES
article
Socialist Workers Party 2020 campaign platform This is the SWP’s
fighting campaign platform to confront the economic, social and moral
crisis caused by capitalism: UNIONS/FOR A LABOR PARTY Support workers’
struggles to organize to defend themselves, to use union power on
behalf of ourselves and all… article end IN THIS ISSUE Front Page
Articles list of 6 items • ‘Workers need our own party, a labor party’
• Coronavirus shows need for revolution in health care • 2020 election
deepens crisis of Democrats, Republicans • Miami car caravan protests
US restrictions on travel to Cuba • ‘This is a fight for the future,’
Asarco miners say as strike enters fifth month • Iraqi workers, youth
protest attacks by the gov’t, Tehran list end Feature Articles list of
1 items • Cuba’s fight against Ebola in Africa is ‘a beacon of light’
list end
Also In This Issue
list of 5 items
• Sinn Fein vote surge fueled by social crisis, calls for Irish unity
• UK: ‘Solidarity with protests by working people in Iran!’
• Havana book fair highlights solidarity between Cuba, Vietnam • Sign
up for the 2020 May Day Brigade to Cuba!
• Answer US slanders against Cuba!
list end
On the Picket Line
list of 2 items
• East Bay transit workers fight bosses’ takebacks, seek support •
French workers continue protest against Macron’s pension assault list
end 25, 50 and 75 years ago main region end © Copyright 2020 The
Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New York, NY 10018 -
themilitant@xxxxxxx Cookies This site uses cookies to improve your
experience.
Learn more.
Okay, thanks
--
___
Sam Harris
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that
frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as
much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent
that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was
written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for
eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the
universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.”
― Sam Harris,
