Demos vote contra aid

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STOP COMRAD Joseph Ryan Socialist Action defeat contra aid as a viable policy option but are instead trying to downplay contra aid during the election period," said Bruce Campbell of the Nicaraguan Network. "This has caused activists to start questioning whether the Democrats are really committed to ending the contra war."

Many activists, in fact, are admitting that it is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between the two presidential candidates, Dukakis and Bush.

In a speech given in Paris on June 14, one of Dukakis's foreign-policy advisers, Joseph Nye, reassured the members of the Atlantic Council that a Dukakis administration would continue research on Star Wars. He also endorsed the 1986 bombing of Libya as "reasonable and prudent" and approved the deployment of naval forces in the Persian Gulf.

Lloyd Bentsen, like Dan Quayle, is an ardent supporter of the contra terrorists. And while campaigning through the Southern states, he stated his support for "a strong miltary defense."

In this pre-election period, both parties and their candidates are busy trying to 13 YAS to create some differences where none really exist.

As Joseph Harsch noted in the Aug. 18 issue of The Christian Science Monitor:

"Anyone familiar with Washington knows that over the next four years, and perhaps longer, there is not going to be any major change in the new American system. ... America has reached a new equilibrium, which is certain to last for at least four years, regardless of which party wins."

Instead of supporting Democrats in the hope that, once elected, they will relieve the pressure on the Nicaraguan Revolution —a dangerous illusion—antiwar activists should begin organizing mass demonstrations in the streets against contra aid.

This is how the war in Vietnam was stopped. The "liberal" Johnson administration rained only death and destruction on the people of Vietnam. If it considered it necessary to defend imperialist interests, a Dukakis "liberal" administration would do the same thing against the people of Central America.

But beyond the issue of a mass-action strategy against the war, there is a more fundamental question confronting the labor movement and all other movements for social change: the need to break with the twin parties of capitalism.

At a recent convention of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW), Tony Mazzocchi, a union leader who has long been outspoken in his opposition to the Democratic Party, told convention delegates: "If the November elections turn out to be a choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, then we should give the labor party idea more consideration."

There's no need to wait until November to find out there's no difference between the two major candidates. It's a foregone conclusion. We've seen time and time again that Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Democrats and Republicans, are indeed two sides of the same coin.

Only when we have an alternative to "lesser evil" voting will working people have a real choice in the electoral arena. And that will only occur through the formation of a labor party based on the unions and open to all the oppressed.

In the meantime, the presidential campaign of Socialist Workers Party candidates James Warren and Kathleen Mickells points in the direction of independent working-class political action.

The SWP platform puts human needs above profits. It calls for a 30-hour workweek with no cut in pay as a key means of combating unemployment. It also calls for a massive public-works program to provide more jobs and at the same time meet pressing social needs.

This is why working people should vote for James Warren for president and Kathleen Mickells for vice president in November.

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