Defeat the two-party system
2016Marsha Feinland 2016-02Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 8 →
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I was invited here to speak for the Peace and Free dom Party candidate for president. There are four candidates seeking the presidential nomination of The Peace and Freedom Party: Gloria LaRiva of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, who is one of the panelists; Lynn Kahn, an independent , who is in the audience; Monica Moorehead of the Workers’ World Party; and Jill Stein, of the Green Party. I am not rep resenting any particular candidate. I speak as a mem ber of the Peace and Freedom Party, which is the only party on the ballot in California that advocates for so cialism. ...
Every four years, trade unionists and other usually dependable class-struggle fighters devote their ener gy to supporting and working for a Democratic Party presidential candidate. They act on their fear of the increasingly grotesque Republican Party. The Repub lican Party becomes the force that dominates the po litical landscape as the “leaders” of the working class call any effort to build a working-class party “unreal istic,” and support for the Democrats “imperative.” So we end up on the never-ending see-saw of one capi talist party or the other in charge.
The only way to defeat the Republicans is to defeat the two-party system. What about the “good” Demo crats? The ones in Congress who support the Conyers health care bill (a Medicare-for-All bill originally in troduced by Ron Dellums), and the Progressive bud It is fitting that I am representing Jill Stein [and the Green Party]. Many people have come up to me and said, “I know who you are! You’re Jill Stein!” No, but thank you. Jill and I have something in common. We were both arrested outside debates for offices for which we were candidates, presidential and gubernatorial.
The specific charge against me in 2010 when I ran for governor was a crime I was absolutely committing— guilty as charged: “trespassing at a private party.” Jill Stein is working to make it a “public party.” Her cam paigns in 2012 and already in 2016 have helped to smash a chink in the armor of the private parties, and helped make debates and elections more public.
The big question about the 2016 election is the follow ing: “What are the supporters of Bernie Sanders going to do when the Democratic Party does not nominate him?”
... Challenge?
(continued from page 7: “Will Sanders challenge the billionaires?”)
Show” world, where what we see, learn, and come to believe, and even value, is manufactured for us by a ruling class that controls most of society’s institu tions—from the media to the educational system, to the puppet politicians. Isn’t it true that capitalism runs an almost year-round election cycle in which we are told that everything can change if we simply vote the bad guys out and the good guys in?
In contrast, let’s have a look at the real world, again, the world where “liberal” Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, receive the greatest portion of all cor porate campaign money. The “progressive” Democrat Obama, the first Black president, deported more im migrants, two million, than any president before him.
“The Great Deporter!”
Obama has seven wars to his credit, either ongoing or begun under his administration—Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen Africa’s re-colonization wars, drone wars around the world, covert wars, death squad wars, and privatized army wars. Bernie supported most of these horrors except Iraq. That war was a “mistake,” he insists. “There were no weapons of mass destruction.” Yes, friends, the Iraq War was a 8 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 2016 get, an impressive document that provides everything a good welfare state should. Can’t we take over the Democratic Party and make it our party?
No. While the “good” Democrats keep working-class and well meaning people voting for them, their policy documents never go anywhere. The dominant forces in the party prevail. Here is a short list of what their achievements: They didn’t filibuster Bush’s Supreme Court appointments; They didn’t contest the 2000 elections; They bailed out the banks and let the hom eowners get foreclosed on; They do not significantly tax the rich; They will not give us a decent health care system; They are dismantling our public schools (note that liberal Democrats George Miller and Ted Kenne dy helped author the No Child Left Behind Act); They promote extraordinary police and surveillance pow ers; And they perpetuate the war machine.
The Democratic Party is a ruthless enforcer, destroy ing its own when necessary! In 1934, Upton Sinclair, a socialist, won the Democratic Party primary for governor of California. His program was called End Poverty in California, and EPIC clubs sprang up all over the state. But the Democratic Party establish ment, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Hollywood and the press, refused to endorse Sinclair and ensured a Republican victory. There is no reason to believe that the Democratic Party is now ready to take on the so cialist mantle.
It is easy to feel hopeless and demoralized. The task of building an independent party of the working class seems daunting. But we can look at some emerging movements for encouragement. Significant portions of Occupy, the living wage campaign, the environmen tal movement, anti-eviction defenders, and the strug gle against police violence and mass incarceration all are taking on an anti-capitalist stance.
We need to join the growing movements. We need to connect our political theory with the real struggles on the ground. We need to put aside sectarianism and work together. We can build a workers’ party. We can and we have to. n