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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted
from the Oct. 17, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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"We're going to crash the 1996 elections!"
This was the theme Workers World Party presidential and vice-presidential candidates Monica Moorehead and Gloria La Riva adopted when they announc ed their candidacy almost a year ago.
On Oct. 7, before a live national television audience, they did just that. It was a dramatic confrontation-and it was broadcast live across the nation by the C-Span cable-television network.
Inside the auditorium of the National Press Club in Washington, reporters were gathered to hear a debate to which all the "major presidential candidates" had supposedly been invited. At the podium were three white men, right wingers all.
Monica Moorehead had not been invited. That didn't keep her away.
As the debate was beginning, Moorehead, running mate La Riva and a delegation from Workers World Party strode to the front of the hall.
Forcefully asserting herself as the only presidential candidate who is a Black woman and represents the working class, Moorehead demanded: "Let me speak! Let me speak!"
The event was sponsored by the International Center for Economic Justice, a right-wing think tank, and the George Mason University School of Law.
Organizers said they invited only the "major U.S. presidential candidates," including Clinton, Dole, right-wing billionaire Ross Perot and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. None of them showed up.
The candidates who did attend were reactionaries John Hagelin of the Natural Law Party, Harry Browne of the Libertarian Party, and Howard Philips of the National Taxpayers Party.
None of the debate organizers seemed to notice or care that all the invited candidates were white men and defenders of the capitalist system to one degree or another.
It most certainly didn't matter to debate moderator Jennifer Lazlo. Her group, Lazlo & Associates, worked on Boris Yeltsin's re-election campaign in Russia last spring. That campaign was noteworthy for totally censoring all other candidates-especially progressive, socialist ones.
So it was no wonder that the Moorehead-La Riva Campaign had found out about the "all-inclusive" debate second-hand.
Two days before the debate, WWP organizers contacted the sponsors to demand that Moorehead-the only wo man of color and the only worker running for president-be allowed to participate.
Moorehead was refused access, ostensibly because she isn't on the ballot in enough states.
She came anyway.
Moorehead took the floor-and she and her comrades held it for 12 solid minutes, all broadcast live by C-Span.
She said: "I am a socialist and I represent the millions of workers who are suffering from layoffs and low wages. And I demand to speak."
Debate organizers were dumbfounded. They obviously didn't know what to do. As they scrambled to figure out how to resume with their neatly structured pro-bourgeois program, Moorehead continued angrily:
"Where is it written that only white males can be invited to debate? I am the only African American woman running a serious campaign on behalf of poor and working people. Everyone at this debate is a defender of capitalism.
"I have a right to be heard.
"I am for jobs. I am for health care. I am for child care. I'm against corporate greed. I'm against the downsizing that has cost 43 million good-paying jobs.
"I'm against the scapegoating of immigrant workers. I'm for affirmative action and I have a right to be heard on this podium."
La Riva asked, "Why are you afraid of having your ideas challenged?" And she said, "It's because she's a socialist- that's why you won't let Monica Moorehead speak."
When Laszlo asked Moorehead to leave, La Riva countered that Browne, Hagelin or Phillips should give her a podium. She said people have a right to hear the voices of working-class candidates.
All this went on for about 12 minutes before security finally forced the delegation to leave.
The big-business media blockade had been broken-at least partially. And it took working-class candidates "crashing the elections" to do it.
Minutes after Moorehead had finished speaking, the Associated Press dispatched a story headlined "Moorehead Disrupts Debate."
It was picked up widely around the country. Radio and print journalists started calling for interviews with the courageous candidate.
On Oct. 8 many newspapers ran stories about the African American socialist who demanded to be heard. These included the San Francisco Chronicle, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Atlanta Constitution and others.
The Oct. 7 action wasn't the first time the Moorehead-La Riva campaign had taken on the bourgeois electoral process head-on. In August, Moorehead confronted President Bill Clinton in New York at his Sheraton Hotel birthday bash, denouncing him for signing the welfare bill.
"How can you eat cake when you've condemned a million more children to poverty?" she asked before being dragged out by the Secret Service.
WWP activists also stole the spotlight in Quincy, Mass., on Oct. 4, when Hillary Rodham Clinton made a campaign stop there. Passing through the gates with two concealed placards, six protesters waited for two hours until Clinton starting speaking. Then they started chanting, "Stop the war against the poor-welfare is a right!"
It took some time before the police-who along with Clinton were somewhat stunned at the action-led the protesters away.
The next day, in New York, Moorehead-La Riva protesters were again on hand at another campaign appearance by Hillary Rodham Clinton. One campaign worker was arrested for hoisting a sign opposing welfare cuts.
Of course, the Moorehead-La Riva campaign has demonstrated against Republican contender Bob Dole as well.
What transpired live on C-Span Oct. 7, however, was the icing on the cake-at least for now. It brought a working-class, socialist message to a national television audience. Although the form was limited, the content exposed the utter sham of U.S. capitalist democracy, particularly its most revered tool: the elections.
The 1996 presidential election is one of the most undemocratic in recent U.S. history, even by bourgeois standards. Not only has Moorehead been censored, but even Perot has been pushed out somewhat-as witness his exclusion from the Clinton/Dole debate held Oct. 6. Why?
Because the U.S. ruling class wants to keep an iron grip on its two-party system, a system that has proven effective in keeping the masses tied to the chariot wheel of capitalist exploitation and oppression.
Moreover, the bosses are rallying in greater numbers behind Clinton. They don't want anything to upset this apple cart.
On Oct. 7, the Clinton administration announced that more than 2,500 chief executives and heads of businesses had endorsed the president for re-election. Big wigs from Xerox, Sprint and United Technologies, among others, said, "Democrat Bill Clinton has been good for American business."
That he has. During the Clinton years, corporate restructuring and downsizing of jobs and wages has enabled the major corporations and the big banks to rake in record profits. Meanwhile, the income gap between rich and poor has accelerated, according to a recent U.S. Census study.
All this has pleased the CEOs, who are now putting big bucks behind Clinton.
A few weeks ago, the repressive Fraternal Order of Police also endorsed Clinton. Clinton has fattened their trough too.
On Oct. 7, Reuter reported that the big-business endorsement "was unusual in U.S. politics, where industry has typically sided with Republicans rather than with Democrats."
Of course, not all the big money is going to Clinton. Dole will get his hefty share too. But it seems that many in the ruling class are afraid that Dole is a little too harsh in his selling of U.S. capitalism.
Clinton, on the other hand, may be able to keep the labor and progressive movement at bay while at the same time helping the rich pig out at the profit trough.
At least this is what the bosses want to believe. Will it work out that way?
Gloria La Riva told Workers World: "The capitalists always make the mistake of underestimating the masses. One thing about the elections-they will be over in less than a month. In time, class reality will replace the temporary electoral illusion.
"And the struggle will come against both big-business parties and the imperialists they serve. We will help build it, as we are doing now."
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@wwpublish.com. For subscription info send message to: ww-info@wwpublish.com. Web: http://www.workers.org)