The end objectives of our involvement in peace movement activity leading up to the midterm elections is:
1) To broaden the circle of people in the peace movement who are familiar with the ---------------- Party’s outlook on the elections and the need to defeat the ultra-right.
2) To deepen the understanding of the role of movements in political empowerment.
3) To strengthen basis for recruiting new Party members.
4) To energize the peace movement with tactics that move mass protest and majority opposition to the occupation into political action.
The Democratic Party and its candidates are only as strong politically and economically as the mass movements behind them. The greater participation of the Party and Left, the more effective the movements are, the more likely we can deliver a blow to the Right in November.
With our collective efforts in the targeted congressional races and our mobilizations in the streets and in the halls of Congress, the mid term elections can become a turning point in ending the occupation of Iraq.
Judith LeBlanc is a National Vice-Chair of the CPUSA and Chair of its Peace & Solidarity Commission.
http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/770/1/56/
===================================================
The ultra-right represents the most extreme, backwards, reactionary sections of transnational capital. They represent the war profiteers and the energy/oil conglomerates. If left in power, they aim to:
Waste billions of dollars on unjust wars
Deny workers the right to organize a union
Destroy public education and the ability for us to go to college
Undermine the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act
Deny a woman’s right to choose
Privatize Social Security and dismantle pensions
Repeal environmental regulations and reject any measures to curb global warming.
Young people, particularly youth of color and working class youth, suffer the most under these regressive measures, often seeing the military as their only option after high school. The overwhelming majority of soldier deaths are young men and women under 30. Those that do return often suffer from post-traumatic stress and mental illness, making it difficult to return to school or get a decent job. In fact, the jobs available to youth overall do not provide much to shout about. The long-lasting ultra-right wing attack on trade unions, which the Reagan administration took the lead on in the 1980s, has left young workers to fend for themselves with less than five percent of young workers having a union job.
With no real interest in education, companies flock to schools to make money off of students. In reference to privatization, the National Education Association, a teachers’ union, reports on their web site that, if the ultra-right isn’t stopped, “one could imagine a system of public education where nearly all administrative, teaching, support, and even cultural functions would be controlled by private companies, reducing the role of elected school boards to glorified contract administrators.”
Young people are also the ones that would suffer from the environmental damages caused by deregulation of corporate emissions standards. We will have to scrap for reproductive rights in an anti-Roe v. Wade era. And in another 30 or 40 years, it will be today’s young people left with the empty bank account that used to be social security and pensions.
Of course, a Democratic victory in 2008 will not solve all the problems caused by so many years of ultra-right domination, or by capitalism in general.
-------------------
The Democratic Party is also a coalition: Its leadership does consist of the less reactionary section of monopoly capital, but its mass base is currently made up of the labor unions, youth organizations, a large segment of the anti-war movement, women’s organizations, civil rights organizations, civil libertarians and so on. Looking at the parties as coalitions is more illuminating than simply looking at the leadership; it becomes much easier to see which camp we want to be in, which coalition we want to see win at this stage.
--------------------
The leading Democratic candidates represents the strongest opposition to the ultra-right we’ve ever seen in a presidential election. The mere fact that candidates must posture over who is more pro-jobs, pro-peace, pro-gay or pro-healthcare is a giant leap forward. And who cannot find progress in the fact that much of the country seems ready to elect either a Black man or a woman as president?
And there is something to be said for the movement of young people that surrounds Barack Obama. An overwhelming majority of the 2008 primary youth vote went to Sen. Obama, who won this section of the electorate in all Super Tuesday states but Arkansas, California and Massachusetts. Even in those states, Obama kept the margin of victory incredibly low. Obama went on to sweep the Potomac Primaries (D.C., Maryland and Virginia). Of the two candidates, many feel he has provided an inspirational vision for the future of our country. And for youth, who so often feel left out of the discussion, this has been increasingly attractive.
------------------------------------
This fight is winnable, and there is an actual strategy to win, a strategy that consists of more than playing at revolution and calling for chaos in the streets. Right now the elections are the most critical form of struggle; this is where we have the best shot of finally breaking the back of the ultra right. Afterwards, we will continue to build a united movement that can work to establish a real electoral alternative, and eventually to challenge the system overall.
The only next steps to really ending the war, passing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), raising the Pell Grant in a significant way, among other things, is to get around the Bush veto. This means that McCain must be denied the White House in November
http://tinyurl.com/bpeat9
http://www.cpusa.org/article/view/940/
http://www.cpusa.org/article/view/988/
http://www.cpusa.org/article/view/843/
1) To broaden the circle of people in the peace movement who are familiar with the ---------------- Party’s outlook on the elections and the need to defeat the ultra-right.
2) To deepen the understanding of the role of movements in political empowerment.
3) To strengthen basis for recruiting new Party members.
4) To energize the peace movement with tactics that move mass protest and majority opposition to the occupation into political action.
The Democratic Party and its candidates are only as strong politically and economically as the mass movements behind them. The greater participation of the Party and Left, the more effective the movements are, the more likely we can deliver a blow to the Right in November.
With our collective efforts in the targeted congressional races and our mobilizations in the streets and in the halls of Congress, the mid term elections can become a turning point in ending the occupation of Iraq.
Judith LeBlanc is a National Vice-Chair of the CPUSA and Chair of its Peace & Solidarity Commission.
http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/770/1/56/
===================================================
The ultra-right represents the most extreme, backwards, reactionary sections of transnational capital. They represent the war profiteers and the energy/oil conglomerates. If left in power, they aim to:
Waste billions of dollars on unjust wars
Deny workers the right to organize a union
Destroy public education and the ability for us to go to college
Undermine the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act
Deny a woman’s right to choose
Privatize Social Security and dismantle pensions
Repeal environmental regulations and reject any measures to curb global warming.
Young people, particularly youth of color and working class youth, suffer the most under these regressive measures, often seeing the military as their only option after high school. The overwhelming majority of soldier deaths are young men and women under 30. Those that do return often suffer from post-traumatic stress and mental illness, making it difficult to return to school or get a decent job. In fact, the jobs available to youth overall do not provide much to shout about. The long-lasting ultra-right wing attack on trade unions, which the Reagan administration took the lead on in the 1980s, has left young workers to fend for themselves with less than five percent of young workers having a union job.
With no real interest in education, companies flock to schools to make money off of students. In reference to privatization, the National Education Association, a teachers’ union, reports on their web site that, if the ultra-right isn’t stopped, “one could imagine a system of public education where nearly all administrative, teaching, support, and even cultural functions would be controlled by private companies, reducing the role of elected school boards to glorified contract administrators.”
Young people are also the ones that would suffer from the environmental damages caused by deregulation of corporate emissions standards. We will have to scrap for reproductive rights in an anti-Roe v. Wade era. And in another 30 or 40 years, it will be today’s young people left with the empty bank account that used to be social security and pensions.
Of course, a Democratic victory in 2008 will not solve all the problems caused by so many years of ultra-right domination, or by capitalism in general.
-------------------
The Democratic Party is also a coalition: Its leadership does consist of the less reactionary section of monopoly capital, but its mass base is currently made up of the labor unions, youth organizations, a large segment of the anti-war movement, women’s organizations, civil rights organizations, civil libertarians and so on. Looking at the parties as coalitions is more illuminating than simply looking at the leadership; it becomes much easier to see which camp we want to be in, which coalition we want to see win at this stage.
--------------------
The leading Democratic candidates represents the strongest opposition to the ultra-right we’ve ever seen in a presidential election. The mere fact that candidates must posture over who is more pro-jobs, pro-peace, pro-gay or pro-healthcare is a giant leap forward. And who cannot find progress in the fact that much of the country seems ready to elect either a Black man or a woman as president?
And there is something to be said for the movement of young people that surrounds Barack Obama. An overwhelming majority of the 2008 primary youth vote went to Sen. Obama, who won this section of the electorate in all Super Tuesday states but Arkansas, California and Massachusetts. Even in those states, Obama kept the margin of victory incredibly low. Obama went on to sweep the Potomac Primaries (D.C., Maryland and Virginia). Of the two candidates, many feel he has provided an inspirational vision for the future of our country. And for youth, who so often feel left out of the discussion, this has been increasingly attractive.
------------------------------------
This fight is winnable, and there is an actual strategy to win, a strategy that consists of more than playing at revolution and calling for chaos in the streets. Right now the elections are the most critical form of struggle; this is where we have the best shot of finally breaking the back of the ultra right. Afterwards, we will continue to build a united movement that can work to establish a real electoral alternative, and eventually to challenge the system overall.
The only next steps to really ending the war, passing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), raising the Pell Grant in a significant way, among other things, is to get around the Bush veto. This means that McCain must be denied the White House in November
http://tinyurl.com/bpeat9
http://www.cpusa.org/article/view/940/
http://www.cpusa.org/article/view/988/
http://www.cpusa.org/article/view/843/
