There is no future if we don't vote for the other Wall Street Party we are told. |
Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, Retired
Member DSA
"The two party system can't give relief because
capitalism in large finances both parties.
In one way or another. We may say
it finances the Republican Party more.
But have you ever known Democrats en masse to turn down the enticements
of capitalism?
"There should originate, in the leadership of the
AFL-CIO, a call to the unions for the only answer that is noble: global
unionism is the answer to global capitalism.
"We were never meant
to be beggars at the table of wealth. We
were never meant to be the apostles of labor cannibalism on the world
stage. We were meant for a higher
destiny. We were never meant to be the
lieutenants of capitalism. We were never
meant to be the pall bearers of the workers of the world."
Jack Henning, Executive Secretary California State Labor Federation Convention Opening Remarks 1994 *
Jack Henning, Executive Secretary California State Labor Federation Convention Opening Remarks 1994 *
In some ways 2020 is an
election year in the US like no other. Yet in some ways it isn’t. Millions of
people dread the thought of waking up the morning after the election to another
four years with a degenerate racist and sexual predator in the White House. Who
cannot sympathize with that? He is not the only one of course, he’s just open
about it.
But in one sense, this
election is the same as all the others as the US working class has no political
representatives, no political voice of our own. I have good friends and solid
comrades who I know will vote for the Democratic Party candidate once again no
matter who it is, Sanders, Warren, Biden etc. This situation, the usual “lesser of two evils” option, is why 100
million or more people never voted in 2016 and why millions of US workers are
disgusted with politics altogether. It doesn’t work and never has. The mantra now is,
anyone but Trump. Now is not the time
to split the vote. And while I respect those friends and others who take this
position because their motives are sound, many of them not particularly fond of
the Democratic Party either, I cannot agree with this position.
I have a very different
opinion however of the long-time Democratic Party apologists who penned the open
letter attacking the Green Party USA , among them the liberal academics
Bill Fletcher, Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich. These individuals, despite
having opportunity after opportunity to play a different role, have been
devoted champions of the other capitalist party and as a left cover for the
right wing bureaucracy that heads organized labor, (see list below for the list).**
Bill Fletcher, who is often
touted as a militant rank and file labor activist spent most of his time in the
ranks of the labor hierarchy as an official and advisor. He was an advisor to
the president of the AFL-CIO for a while. You don’t get that job being a militant
rank and file activist. You have to prove you are safe. It reveals the complete bankruptcy
and shameless opportunism of these individuals that they can attack the Green Party in this way and not one word of criticism for the trade union hierarchy that
is a more legitimate target. The AFL-CIO leadership has for years backed a
political party that their members abandoned long ago. It is the Team Concept in the political sphere.
The heads of organized labor
bear a great deal of responsibility for the rise of Trump, refusing to offer a
political alternative to the millions of US workers disgusted with the status
quo. They've spent billions of dollars
of their members’ hard earned dues money over the decades helping get Democrats
elected who have participated, with their Republican colleagues, in the attacks of living standards for the US worker. No small amount of the working class
votes for Trump were protest votes, or F*&k you votes along with the 100
million abstentions.
When Ronald Reagan defeated
Jimmy Cater in the 1980 presidential election I was warned by some of my staunchly
Democratic Party friends that we were now threatened with world war. Now is not the time to raise the issue of an
independent workers/labor party I was told. They let out a gasp of relief in
May 1981 when Socialist Party candidate, Francois Mitterand was elected
president of France; he was our only hope in these terrible times, one seasoned
liberal told me. Reagan continued the deregulation begun by Carter. During
Carter’s four years when the Democrats controlled both houses and the
Presidency, not one piece of major legislation affecting organized labor was
passed in that period and Carter used the Taft Hartley against the miners in
1978.
Huge strikes took place in
the 1980’s in response to Reagan’s war against labor after the crushing of the
air traffic controller and their union (PATCO). One was the Hormel strike in
Austen Minnesota in1985-86. The governor of Minnesota during that strike was a
Democrat. We have lost ground under Democratic and Republican administrations
alike. The Democratic Party is the only political party in history that has
dropped nuclear bombs on populated urban centers. The Democratic Party refused
to seat Fanny Lou Hammer and the Freedom Democrats at the 1964 convention. As Sanders did in 2016 betraying many of his
supporters, a third of whom went to Trump, and as the signers of this attack on
the Green Party are doing now and have done for their entire political lives,
they direct any potential independent movement of working people in to the Democratic
Party where it dies a slow death.
Despite Trump, there is no
guarantee that things wouldn’t have been worse under the warmonger Clinton.
There will be no guarantee that replacing Trump with Warren or Biden will
change too much when it comes to the basics, it will at best slow the decline as it tempers the resistance. As far as US foreign policy,
things will remain the same if not worse. Outside of his persona the main
problem with Trump for the Democrats as the other party of capital is that he
is undermining the institutions of capitalism, which includes the mass media,
and he is moving too fast threatening social upheaval.
I
concur with Cindy Sheehan in her response to this anti-democratic appeal to
Green Party members to vote Democratic who wrote:
“Clinton has supported every U.S. imperialist war that
ever came her way and as her tenure as Secretary of State, she engineered the
coup of a legitimately elected government in Honduras and the complete destruction
and debilitation of Libya.”
As a registered Green I voted
for Jill Stein in 2016 and am normally registered Peace and Freedom Party here
in CA. I do not feel at all responsible for Clinton’s defeat. Putin did not
elect Trump, GPUSA voters did not elect him either; the undemocratic Electoral
College and a pathetic campaign from a Democratic Party that could hardly be
described as an “opposition” did.
The two parties of US
capitalism are in crisis and the era during which they have dominated the
economic and political life of US society is over. I have my share of criticism
of the Green Party but the signatories of this letter, alongside the right wing
bureaucracy atop organized labor and its hangers on, are far more responsible
than the Green Party or its supporters for Trump sitting in the White House.
*Henning was a great speaker.
Unfortunately he never used his power toward this end and made sure the resolutions
for a Labor Party based on the trade unions that I introduced as a delegate
from my Local, Afscme 444 in Oakland California, were not adopted.
** Here's the list of people who signed the letter:
Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher, Leslie Cagan, Ron Daniels, Kathy Kelly, Norman Solomon, Cynthia Peters and Michael Albert.
** Here's the list of people who signed the letter:
Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher, Leslie Cagan, Ron Daniels, Kathy Kelly, Norman Solomon, Cynthia Peters and Michael Albert.
2 comments:
I agree with your criticisms of the letter, and its signatories. My only regret is that you did not give the other signers the individual scrutiny you gave Fletcher. Especially Ehrenreich. My personal experience with Ehrenreich was around the year 1976, when she was a leader of a small group called "Action for Women in Chile." I was already an organizer of "Columbia University for Chilean Human Rights." Sally Guttmacher invited me to also join AFWC. AFWC was planning small, unpublicized, very militant, possibly illegal actions to protest the participation of the Pinochet regime ship, The Esmeralda, in the 1976 bicentennial celebrations, since it had been a venue for torture of antifascists. I counterposed the idea of building a large, legal demonstration that we could build broadly. For this, Ehrenreich redbaited me, accusing me of CP membership. I was in fact at the time unaffiliated, having left the YSA, a Trotskyist youth group. I walked out. Sally called me to apologize, but I never went back, and I always remembered Ehrenreich.
Who and what are really responsible for so many working and poor people in areas like the Rust Belt and Appalachia voting for Trump? It was the establishment of the Democratic and Republican parties, with their support for globalization and financialization polices that led to the loss of jobs, homes, families, and left a trail of shattered lives and communities. Hillary Clinton lost Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsulvania etc. not because of the Greens, but because of who she was and what she represented. The working people who voted against her may not have degrees from elite schools, but they're not stupid and they know whose policies destroyed their lives. And now Chomsky, Fletcher, Ehrenreich et al come along and insist that we must all back whomever the Democrats decide to run for President in order to beat Trump and the right. So their solution is to bring back and install in office those whose failed policies were responsible for folks turning to Trump out of desperation in the first place. Now suppose that the Democrats win. We'll get a repetition of those same failed policies -- and fouor years from now, the support for Trump (or whatever demagogue arises to fill his slot) will be even greater than it was in 2016. The way to fight the right is not to support (and certainly not to insist that everyone must support) the neoliberals who are ultimately responsible for the support that the right is getting from so many decent but battered working and poor people.
Post a Comment