Mondale/Ferraro: "More of the same"

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By SYLVIA WEINSTEIN The following are excerpts from a speech to a July 28 rally launching Sylvia Weinstein's campaign for board of supervisors in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO— We in this city have recently been witness to a circus far bigger than Barnum and Bailey. I'm talking about the Democratic Party National Convention, which cost the city's taxpayers over $10 million.

Mayor Feinstein spent $100,000 on a party for the big-shots at the convention, while poverty-stricken people line up for a free meal at St. Anthony's shelter. Willie Brown, Democratic speaker of the California State Assembly, spent $400,000 for a gala convention ball, while working mothers, who cannot afford child-care, have to hang door keys around the necks of their little children.

There are parts of this city, such as the Western Addition and Hunters Point, that look like a disaster area. Why? Because the real estate interests and the banks are playing god with our communities. "Mondo Condo" is sweeping the city as apartment dwellers are thrown out of their residences to make room for condominium conversions.

Forget about the dream of owning a home. A lot of young people would be satisfied just to have their own apartments and not have to share with others. And thousands of people in this city cannot even find a bed to sleep in. They roam the streets with bedrolls on their backs looking for a doorway to huddle in. That is the background in which the Democrats held their convention in our city.

Democrats love corporations

The Democratic convention nominated Walter Mondale for president and Geraldine Ferraro for vice president. Mondale would like us to forget that he was Carter's right-hand man for four years, as they did all they could to attack the rights of working people, Blacks, women, and others.

Carter and Mondale promised during their 1976 campaign to cut the war budget $5 to $7 billion. But after taking office, Carter and Mondale asked for a $10 billion increase in the war budget. Carter and Mondale increased funds for rights. "crocodile tears about "human the dictators of Central America, while Their secretary of agriculture, however, saved $25 million a year by cutting down on the school milk program for 1.4 million needy schoolchildren.

Carter promised to support the Equal Rights Amendment during his campaign, but he gave women a glimpse of his real feeling toward their struggle for equality when he cut funds for abortions for poor women. You would have to be a little naive to think that Mondale was just an innocent bystander during the Carter years.

Geraldine Ferraro, for her part, says that she supports a woman's right to choose but that she would never have an abortion herself. But to give credence to the Moral Majority's claim that abortion is somehow immoral and un-Christian only adds fuel to the right-wing fire.

Abortion clinics are under attack. They have been fire-bombed and prayer-bombed. We've seen preachers actually walking into the middle of an abortion operation to say a prayer for the "unborn."

The anti-abortionists actually call up the parents of young women who have had abortions to tell them what their daughters have done.

What Ferraro should is that she will join the escort groups to help women go to a clinic without being harassed by right-to-life fanatics. She should have said that she will prosecute the "raving-right,, who harass clinics. She should have said that she will restore the funds for abortion that were wiped out by the Carter and Reagan administrations. But she didn't and she won't.

Ferraro also supports prayer in public schools. She supports the school voucher initiative that would take funds away from public schools and put them in the hands of private and religious schools.

Ferraro voted against the SimpsonMazzoli Bill because it would give "amnesty" to some "illegal aliens."

She said that this would be an insult to people like her parents who came to this country legally.

Betty Freidan said that every woman should feel a little taller because of Ferraro's nomination as the first woman vice-presidential candidate of either major party. But let me remind you of the British miners who today are being beaten and jailed by another woman. Her name is Margaret Thatcher. The fact is that a woman candidate is only as good as her program.

Take my word for it. You are asking for more of the same if you elect Mondale and Ferraro. Their job is and will be to increase the profits of big capital at the expense of the workers. That's what we can expect.

Despite all the fighting over the platform at the Democratic convention, there was just one little thing left out— the truth. Actually there has never been a Democratic platform that really told the truth. How could it? The Democrats wouldn't get many votes if they said, "We're sorry, but we must protect the YOU'IL ULL LIKE IT. corporate wealth of the ruling class. We are even willing, if necessary, to have a nuclear war to protect private profit."

Instead, they stage a little drama to fool the audience into believing that the platform is a bible, promising all things to all people, that cannot be violated. Meanwhile in the back room the big boys are calling the shots.

Now most of you know all this. But there are some who will say I am just a cynic. After all, there has to be a difference between Mondale and Reagan. There has to be a "lesser evil" in this election.

Well, I am not a cynic. I have enormous faith in the ability of the working class and their allies to change this society and end all the misery I've been talking about.

Every day during the Democratic convention we have seen real-life heroes and heroines on the streets of San Francisco. I'm talking about the picket lines of the retail clerks of Local 1100 at Macy's and Emporium department stores.

These men and women are caught in the vise of big-business and their bootlicking judges and politicians. The mayor, the courts, and the cops have all sprung into action to carry out the employers' demand that the mass picket lines be broken up. They have imposed on the union a highly-restrictive injunction against picketing.

What these strikers need is solidarity from the entire labor movement of this city. Instead of throwing their money away on back-stabbing politicians, the unions ought to use all their Political Action Committee money to help workers on strike defend themselves. They ought to use their resources to build their own party, a labor party, instead of the Democratic Party.

I became a socialist almost 40 years ago. Far from having changed my mind, I am more convinced than ever of the rightness of socialism. I believe this economic system is bankrupt. I also believe that working people, who make this country run, have the potential to build a new society that is in the interests of all the exploited and oppressed.

As I run for the Board of Supervisors, I intend to speak the truth about this system. And I expect by the end of this campaign to have more socialists, more activists, more thinking members of the working class with us in our struggle. So join Socialist Action and work to build a better world.

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