Freedom Road 2008 Election Analysis

2008 Presidential Elections: Defeat McCain

By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

The anti-war movement and a wide array of progressive people’s forces is set to protest outside the Sept. 1 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Organizers are predicting more than 50,000 will fill the streets on Labor Day 2008. Protesters will confront the war-makers, racists and reactionaries who just a few years ago were bragging that Republican rule would last forever.

The Republicans are desperate to turn around their decline, after losing big in the November 2006 congressional elections. More recently they lost three special elections, one each in Mississippi and Louisiana as well as the seat held by former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert of Illinois. The American people are frustrated by the Iraq war, worried about the economy and angry about corruption. The writing is on the wall. It may be in misspelled English, and it may be on the wall of a destroyed house in Iraq, but it is clear that the U.S. occupation is going down and taking the Republicans with it.

So up steps John McCain to receive the Republican crown. McCain is the war and occupation candidate. He is determined to carry forward the Bush agenda and is dedicated to the occupation in Iraq for “maybe 100 years.” “That would be fine with me,” McCain said at a January 2008 campaign stop. More recently McCain changed his tune with a plan to get troops home by 2013 - just in time for the next presidential election. We ask, “Who is he trying to fool?” McCain is more of the same - more war, repression, inequality and tax cuts for the rich. The same tired, worn out politics. Besides, have you seen this man when he gets angry?

On Nov. 4, 2008 we are calling for a vote against McCain. The stage is set to vote out the Republicans and to reject their reactionary agenda of war, immigrant bashing, rolling back the rights of women, racist inequality, discrimination against gays and lesbians and poverty. A vote against McCain will create better conditions for working class and oppressed people to make change in our society. Most importantly, we are calling for a vote against McCain because it will be seen as a referendum on the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Four years, let alone 100 years, is too long to wait.

Barack Obama is on track to be the candidate of the Democratic Party, the other party of big business. This is despite Hillary Clinton’s racist demonization campaign of Obama and his supporters - the distorted attacks on Reverend Wright and the ideas of Black liberation theology, ‘voter registration’ campaigns designed to confuse Black voters and turn them away from the polls and Hillary’s racist appeals to “hard working Americans, white Americans.”

While Hillary Clinton has sunk to her lowest, Barack Obama has risen to answer the attacks and prompted uncomfortable discussions at coffee shops, lunch counters and dinner tables across the country. The United States was built on national oppression: the seizure of land from Native Americans, the slave labor of Africans, the exploitation of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. The struggle against racism and for equality are not just struggles of the past, they continue today, as seen in the fight for immigrant rights, justice for Katrina survivors and against the harassment of Arab Americans and American Muslims.

The facts are plain; Obama parts ways, to a degree, with Clinton on the Iraq War, free trade agreements and racism. He has a message of hope with wide appeal. However, Obama operates well within the confines of the Democrats and their big business backers. That said, his election will create a better political climate for the anti-war, immigrant rights, labor and national movements. And no matter who is in the White House, it is important for progressives to stay active and to fight for an agenda that places the peoples needs first.

Say no to war, racism, discrimination and reaction!

Vote against McCain!

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Long Live International Wokers' Day!

May Day 2008: Long Live the Peoples’ Struggle!
By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

May 1st, International Workers Day, is a day of struggle. Around the world, working people will march against imperialist war, to defend the rights of immigrants and to fight to protect their jobs and communities. Here in the United States, May Day has been reborn as millions of Chicanos, Mexicanos and Central Americans, as well as other immigrants and their supporters, have poured into the streets to demand legalization, and an end to raids, deportations and militarization of the border.

Some of the largest protests for immigrant rights have been in Chicago, the city where May Day was born. On May 1, 1886, U.S. workers, many who were immigrants from Europe, struck for the eight-hour day. After a clash with police in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, four leaders of the workers movement, three of them immigrants, were executed. In honor of the U.S. workers fight for the eight-hour day and the anger at the executions, May 1 was declared International Workers Day.

May Day is a day to fight the system that brings ever-greater riches to a few while the vast majority of working people labor for less and less. Families are losing their homes right and left while the CEOs of the big banks that designed and profited from the bad loans walk away with tens of millions of dollars. Corporations are stepping up their layoffs while raising their prices, putting a double squeeze on working families. Now more and more state and local governments are cutting funds for schools, healthcare and the poor while billions are poured into the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq and war in Afghanistan have killed hundreds of thousands and forced millions to become refugees. The U.S. military is supporting a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing and building walled ghettos in Iraq in a vain attempt to divide and conquer the Iraqi people. The United States and their NATO allies are losing ground in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is trying to increase their troops to prop up the corrupt and inept government set up by the Bush administration.

During the primary elections campaign, the Republican candidates have shown their true colors in calling for even more extreme attacks on immigrants in the United States. At the same time the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) have mounted a growing number of raids on workplaces and even public parks to spread terror among Chicanos, Mexicanos and Central Americans who bear the brunt of attacks on the undocumented. Right-wing anti-immigrant forces have been working at the state and local levels to harass and intimidate immigrants.
Recession, war and immigrant bashing are symptoms of the monopoly capitalist system we live under. A system where the devastation of New Orleans and Mississippi are still not healed, a system that continues to plunder the earth, pollute our skies and oceans and threatens the entire world with unchecked global warming. It is a system that ultimately must be replaced by one that serves peoples’ needs, not profit: a socialist system.

May Day is not just a day to remember wrongs done, it is a day to be inspired by those who continue to fight no matter what the odds. From Palestine to Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan, the people are fighting U.S. and Israeli occupation and their puppet military regimes. From the Philippines to Columbia, the armed struggle against U.S.-backed governments of local oligarchs is intensifying. More and more countries are refusing to bow to U.S. domination of their countries, especially in Latin America where Cuba and Venezuela are but the tip of the iceberg of a growing movement for independence from the Yankee empire.

Here in the United States, struggles are also growing. For the first time in many years, more workers are joining labor unions. At the same time there are victories in electing new leadership that will fight for workers interests and not just cozy up with the bosses. The massive protests against the unjust prosecution of Black students in Jena, Louisiana, show the ongoing struggle of African Americans and other oppressed nationalities. Students on campuses from coast to coast are organizing and speaking out against the war, with a revitalized Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) taking the lead.

Over the past few months a record number of people have turned out in primary elections and caucuses, especially in the Democratic Party presidential campaign. This upsurge represents not only a rejection of the Bush administration’s policies of war, racism, service to the rich and powerful, but also the attraction of electing an African American or a woman to the nation’s highest political office. While the Freedom Road Socialist Organization supports a vote against the Bush and the Republican Party’s right-wing agenda, we know that a President Obama, and even less, a President Clinton can meet the people’s needs.

May 1 is a day to march. It is a day to build the fight back of the working class and the oppressed nationalities: Latinos, African Americans, Asian, Arabs, and Indigenous Peoples. These two forces can be seen in the last two years, where Chicanos, Mexicanos, Central Americans, and their allies, most of whom are workers, have revived the tradition of mass marches on May Day.

Long Live International Workers Day!
Legalization, not Raids and Deportations!
Stop the War, Withdraw All Troops Now!
Protect Our Homes, Schools, and Services, Make the Rich Pay!
Build Fighting Unions, No to More Concessions!

See Also:
Chicago: Huge Immigrant Rights march planned for May 1
Los Angeles: Mobilizing for May 1 Immigrant Rights Protest
Minnesota: March for Immigrant Rights May 1st

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May 1 and the Fight for Equality and Self-Determination

By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

May 1, 2006 will be a historic day as millions of people, mainly Mexicanos (immigrants from Mexico), Chicanos and Central Americans, pour into the streets of United States to support the struggle for immigrant rights. Many have called this upsurge in protests a ‘new civil rights movement.’ We think that this is a very good description of the broad united front of labor, religious, community and youth organizations and the grassroots participation. Most importantly, this fight for equality and self-determination in fact represents a challenge to the monopoly capitalists that rule this country.

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was more than a fight for civil rights; it was a Black liberation movement. It was a struggle of the African American people for full equality. For 75 years, Jim Crow in the South, the system of legal segregation backed by the death squads of the Ku Klux Klan and the systematic discrimination in housing, education and employment in the North and West denied African Americans equality with whites.

Today, the mass mobilization of Mexicanos, Chicanos and other Latinos shows the grassroots desire for full equality in the face of discriminatory immigration laws and practices. A key demand is legalization of the undocumented, which will help them to challenge exploitation and racism and aid in the reunification of their families. The Bush administration’s call for a ‘guest worker program’ to aid business would be a step in the wrong direction, as it would establish a group of second-class residents whose only right would be to work for low pay.

The Black liberation movement was also a struggle for self-determination. It is no accident that the movement began in the U.S. South, from the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott to the sit-in at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, for this is the home of the African American Nation. The African American Nation developed as slavery forged different African peoples with their own languages, cultures and religions into a single people with a common territory, economy, language and culture. After the end of the Civil War and slavery, the United States kept this new nation in chains through Jim Crow and the lynch mob. The Black liberation movement, by breaking the chains of segregation and the Klan, was a step toward both full equality for the African American people in the North and South and towards self-determination for the African American Nation.

Mexicans in the U.S. Southwest have also been forged into a Chicano Nation, as the thousands of Mexicans conquered by the United States in 1848 have grown into millions due to immigration from Mexico under conditions of legal segregation, economic exploitation, systematic suppression of their language and culture and theft of their land. Just as African Americans were denied their human rights through Jim Crow, so today are Chicanos, Mexicanos, and other Latinos denied their human rights through unjust immigration laws. These laws are chains on the Chicano Nation, not only affecting millions of undocumented, but millions more of their family members who are legal residents or U.S. citizens.

This wave of anti-immigrant legislation in the works at the national, state and local levels, and the rise of new white vigilantes such as the Minutemen is not just a tactic to try to build support for the right, the Republicans and the Bush administration, who are suffering from their debacles in Iraq, New Orleans and the attempted privatization of Social Security. Just as the right is trying to reduce the Black population of New Orleans - one of the most important cities economically and culturally of the African American Nation - so too would the anti-immigrant movement try to reduce the Mexicano and Latino population. This is a direct attack on the Chicano Nation, which is gaining strength as Mexicanos and their children who settle in the Southwest become a part of the nation.

The African American movement of the 1950s and 1960s drew support from all nationalities and helped jumpstart the struggles of Asian Americans, Chicano/Latinos, Native Americans and Native Hawai’ians. Today’s struggle for immigrant rights is also drawing support from other immigrants, especially oppressed nationality (African, Arab, and Asian) communities who share the unjust treatment by a racist society that Mexicanos, Latinos and Chicanos face.

Another similarity between the African American movement and the struggle today is the role of militant students and youth. African American college students started the direct action, which spread around the country, of sitting-in at segregated facilities and also spearheaded the drive for Black Studies on college campuses. Today’s Chicano, Mexicano and Latino youth, both immigrants and the children of immigrants, are walking out of their schools to join protests against the attempts to criminalize the undocumented and scapegoat immigrants.

African American workers were the backbone of the civil rights movement, from those who boycotted the buses in Montgomery to the garbage workers on strike in Memphis where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. In today’s struggle Mexicano, Chicano and Latino workers have also been the backbone of the movement, not just swelling the ranks of demonstrators, but also as organizers of the protests. Thus it is quite natural that the immigrant rights protests will be on May 1, International Workers Day, which commemorates the struggle of American workers, many of whom were immigrants, in the 1880s for an eight-hour day.

In this spirit, we call upon workers of all nationalities to support their brother and sister Mexicano, Chicano and Latino workers, to fight for full equality for Mexicano and other Latino peoples and to uphold the right to self-determination for the Chicano Nation. This is because we share a common enemy - the capitalist class in general, and their representatives in the Bush administration and the right - that is behind the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino, anti-black,and anti-union policies of the government and the big corporations.

Long Live May 1st, International Workers Day!
Full Equality for Mexicanos and all immigrants!
Self-Determination for the African American and Chicano Nations!
Workers and Oppressed Peoples Unite!

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Solidaire Interiew with Tom Burke On the Immigrant's Struggle in the USA

"May Day will see a unified national day of action for immigrants rights across the U.S. and more unions are planning to take part in this. Victories for immigrant workers are victories for Black and white workers. Bosses keep wages low, not immigrant workers."

Tom Burke (*) from Chicago answers the questions of Solidaire 14-04-2006

What are the exact reasons of the immigrants' movement in the USA?

Tom Burke: Millions of Mexican immigrants, joined by many other nationalities, are marching through the streets of every major U.S. city to protest the Sensenbrenner bill. This bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives makes being an "illegal" immigrant a felony crime with a prison term. Anyone aiding an "illegal" immigrant also faces jail time. A spontaneous movement of millions of workers in direct opposition to criminalization is shaking the whole U.S., even the White House. For decades, Mexican workers have faced racist abuse and super low wages.

What is the degree of mobilizations in different parts of the USA?

Tom Burke: Anywhere there is Mexican or Latino immigrants there are large marches. It started on March 10th, 2006, when 300,000 or more filled the Chicago Loop, stopping buses, subways, and even trains. Factories and restaurants shut down, students walked out of schools, babies in strollers and grandmas in wheelchairs clogged the streets. In Los Angeles over 500,000 filled the streets two weeks later and 30,000 marched in Milwaukee, Wisconsin the home state of Republican Congressman Sensenbrenner.

On April 10th, cities where immigrants were unknown twenty years ago held large rallies—40,000 in Minneapolis, 20,000 in Indianapolis, 20,000 in Salt Lake City and 50,000 in Atlanta. In the historically Mexican states of the Southwest, the movement is large and strong with 500,000 marching in Dallas, Texas, 50,000 in Denver, Colorado, 50,000 in San Diego, and 35,000 in San Jose, California. Immigrants in the U.S. have been hiding in plain sight for twenty years, but now with the huge marches and rallies there is a new understanding of how much power these workers have.

What are the political, trade-unionist, social forces behind it?

Tom Burke: The political activists and trade unions are running to keep up with the movement of the people. For example, in Chicago, a Mexican immigrant school custodian and trade unionist, Artemio Arreola was one of the leaders of a small coalition that was surprised by the hundreds of thousands who thundered through the streets. He and others like him are organizing people from their villages, cities, and states in Mexico for over a decade now. The huge numbers of protesters is spontaneous, but working class and professional organizers provided the leadership and put out the message to oppose criminalization. Latino radio announcers broadcast the message far and wide. May Day will see a unified national day of action for immigrants rights across the U.S. and more unions are planning to take part in this. The grassroots activists are aware that their leadership will be challenged every step of the way by the forces tied to the rich and powerful, especially from the Democratic Party.

What are the demands of the movement?

Tom Burke: The demands are: to stop the criminalization of immigrants; to create an amnesty that leads to legalization of immigrants without papers; for equal rights for immigrants; for equality and justice for all.

What is the role of communists in the movement?

Tom Burke: The role of communists in the immigrants’ rights movement is small, but important. Many of the leaders were revolutionaries in their youth and some are influenced by Marxism today. There is a pressing need for unity in action, while maintaining principled political positions that advance the cause of the working class. Victories for immigrant workers are victories for Black and white workers. Bosses keep wages low, not immigrant workers. Capitalism is the problem. The profit system is the enemy.

What are the contradictions in the bourgeoisie, in the trade-union organizations?

Tom Burke: There are sections of the capitalist class that oppose immigration and want to deport everyone. There are other capitalists that pay low wages and few or no benefits to immigrants. Lower wages means higher profits. The Republican Party is now split on the issue and a tremendous backtracking is happening. The Democratic Party has done little because it is easier to look the other way while immigrant workers are abused.

Some unions are very supportive of the movement, like the largest U.S. union—the Service Employees International Union. SEIU puts a good amount of effort and money into organizing amongst immigrants because that is who works in their industries. The same with UNITE/HERE that organizes factories and hotels and restaurants. At first these unions were hesitant and cautious, but now seeing the power of the movement they are coming out to provide support and help lead. For other unions, it is a question of local leadership, so carpenters unions in some cities are out in front leading, welcoming immigrants as union brothers. In other cities the union leaders are sitting on their hands, hoping the immigrants do not organize into unions. These leaders run the unions like a business and are racist against Black and Latino workers. There are fewer and fewer of these unions as they are failing. The unions that want to fight for good contracts for the workers and oppose discrimination are the ones that are growing and leading a new movement for social justice.

Tom Burke is Organizational Secretary, Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

Original article here.

Also from Solidaire on immigrant struggle in the US:

+ Interview with John Catalinotto of Workers World Party

+ Article by Gloria La Riva of Party for Socialism and Liberation

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