["The struggles of workers cannot be advanced Inside…]

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"The struggles of workers cannot be advanced Inside a gift to a friend Socialist Action, 3435 Army St., Rm. 308, San Francisco, CA 12 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1985 (continued from page 11: “Labor Marches As 50,000 Join Mobilization”) sciously downplayed the size of the demonstration to make their political point.

Issues like the Middle East require a full-scale educational campaign exposing the role of the Zionists in supporting apartheid in South Africa and the dictatorships in Latin America. A separate coalition of different forces-one in which Socialist Action will participate fully-is needed to advance a fuller understanding of Zionism.

Independent politics

The Spring Mobilization in San Francisco was a test for radical groups claiming to represent the interests of the working class. Most failed the test. Most were disappointed with the demonstration. They failed the Democratic Party."

to understand that the most radical coalition is the one that is capable of mobilizing the most people in action in support of principled political demands.

Independent mass action is not revolutionary in and of itself. But it is an indispensable component of a revolutionary strategy oriented to working people and all the exploited and oppressed in this country.

No list of slogans on paper is as radical as thousands of workers in the streets for the first time against their own government. Their illusions about capitalism will be shed more rapidly once they take independent actions.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, was by all accounts the most powerful speaker at the Washington, D.C., rally. He nonetheless had Name Address City Telephone this the ists:

"This time around, unlike the '60s, we will harness our energies and discipline them for the long-term struggle, and redirect the course of our nation.

The Rainbow Campaign of '84 will become the Rainbow organization of '85 and '86 and '87 and '88. We will translate protest into action. We will increase voter registration, enforce voting rights laws, and have enough votes in '86 to defeat the MX missile.

That's one of our goals."

Doesn't this call to rally to the Democratic Party sound familiar? Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and Robert Kennedy all wanted to translate the Vietnam antiwar movement into politics-that is into the Democratic Party.

In an interview at Howard University three months earlier, Jackson stated plainly that he had no intention of trying to lead Black voters-or antiwar son, as we had predicted in Socialist Action, delivered his "rainbow" to Walter Mondale.

Of course, Jackson is right about the need to translate action into politics. If working people are going to put an end to the policies of this imperialist government, they will need a political instrument of their own to do so.

But this instrument cannot be the Democratic Party. The struggles of working people cannot be advanced by building "rainbow" organization inside the Democratic Party in the coming years.

On the contrary, out of this developing antiwar movement must come something that did not come out of the movement of the 1960s and '70s, and that is a political organization that represents the American working class—a labor party based on the unions.

The changes in American society since Vietnam have made it possible for large numbers of working people and their unions to join in the fight against imperialist war and against the attacks on their standard of living and democratic rights. The issues of South Africa and the nuclear freeze help to broaden the appeal among working people.

The future is bright for building a genuinely broad and massive movement to stop the warmakers. End U.S. Socialist Action/ Joe Ryan

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