Socialist candidates to A16:
‘We’re with you in the streets’
Statement from Monica Moorehead, Workers World Party
candidate for President, and Gloria La Riva, Workers World
Party candidate for Vice President.
On behalf of all the members of Workers World Party across
the United States, we salute you for taking to the streets of
Washington in an attempt to shut down the meetings of the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
And we are not just with you in spirit. We are here
alongside you protesting in the streets.
As two long-time militants, we are particularly heartened
to see waves of young people take their place on the front
lines of these struggles. Many times the young are told that
they are tomorrow's leaders.
But you are exercising your leadership today.
By standing up against two of the repressive tools of
world domination wielded by the most powerful bankers and
industrialists, you are also demonstrating unity with
oppressed peoples around the world.
It is just that kind of solidarity--extended by those of
us who live in the belly of the beast--that will help build a
world movement to challenge capitalist globalization on every
front.
And since the international policies of the U.S.
capitalist Goliath are an extension of its domestic policies,
we must be strong on the fight against injustice and
inequality here in the United States, as well.
This is especially true of the struggle against racism and
national oppression--fault lines of oppression that have been
used to keep us divided and to weaken our fight-back
movements for so long.
The U.S. rulers try to bully oppressed countries into
submission around the world, using their high-tech war
machine. At the same time, the police operate as occupying
armies in Black, Latino, Native, Arab and Asian communities
in this country.
Police violence and murders of oppressed youths are at an
epidemic level. This brutality is not a result of "a few
rotten apples" in the police force. It is part and parcel of
the function of the police--keeping a boot heel on the necks
of those who have the least to lose and the most to gain from
overturning this unjust system.
That's the message of terror the state means to send with
the racist and anti-poor use of the death penalty. This
weapon of legal lynching--like crucifying slaves and burning
peasants at the stake--is meant to warn the oppressed not to
try to rise up and break their shackles.
Today the fight to free death-row political prisoner Mumia
Abu-Jamal has become a focal point of the struggle to end
executions in the United States. Youths of all nationalities
are on the front lines.
When the Theater at Madison Square Garden is liberated for
an event for Mumia on May 7, filled to capacity with
activists ready to move heaven and earth to save his life,
young people will most likely make up the lion's share of the
audience.
Whether the battle at the barricades is joined against
Pentagon bombing of the peoples of Yugoslavia and Iraq, the
oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people, the
right of women to reproductive freedom, or the release of
Elián González from his right-wing captors in
Miami, you'll find Workers World Party members fighting
shoulder to shoulder with you.
We know that the root of all these struggles grows out of
capitalism. This system, in which profits matter and people's
needs don't, generates injustice and inequality like toxic
by-products.
We don't believe that capitalism can be tinkered with and
reformed. Nor are we swayed by political pundits' claims that
capitalism is the highest form of social and economic
organization that human society can reach.
Every slave owner and feudal landowner also swore that
their economic systems would last for eternity.
For the first time in history, it is possible to
consciously build a cooperative world system that can produce
to meet the myriad of human needs and wants. That's what
socialism is: an economic system based on planned production
and the most equitable distribution of the fruits of
collective labor.
At the summits of imperialism, including its highest
peak--U.S. boardrooms and war rooms--the ruling elite gloat
about having overturned workers' states in the former Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe that were trying to build
socialism.
The fact that tens of millions of workers' livelihoods and
life expectancies have plummeted as a result leaves these
billionaires unfazed. The social wealth that bolstered living
standards for these workers is now raising the bottom line
for the corporations and banks.
Yet the victory of these imperialists is ephemeral.
Capitalism still cannot meet the needs, let alone the wants,
of the vast majority in this country. And the unbridled
gallop for plunder and profits around the world--capitalist
globalization--has sparked resistance from Jakarta,
Indonesia, to Bogota, Colombia, to Seattle and now
Washington.
The aspiration for a global socialist society without
classes, in which all who do the work of the world share in
its social wealth, is very much alive, despite media
arguments to the contrary. The deprivations and cruelties
built into life for workers and oppressed peoples under
capitalism drive that aspiration forward.
Just as the slave owners demonized Abolitionists for
daring to struggle to overturn the system of wealth and
privilege, modern bankers and industrialists use all their
powerful tools of media and education to try to discredit the
struggle for socialism. That's because this struggle
threatens their mega-profits and their privileged position in
society.
It took heroic resistance and rebellions by enslaved
Africans, mass organizing by free African Americans and
progressive whites, and ultimately a Civil War to end the
system of chattel slavery in the South.
Today history is seeking the Nat Turners, Sojourner Truths
and John Browns who have the vision and the courage to lead a
massive, revolutionary struggle to overturn this
profit-driven economy, which restricts society's productive
capabilities with the straitjacket of private ownership.
We have confidence that you will answer that call. And so
will millions more when we reach them with a revolutionary
message about the alternative to capitalism.
That's why we're using the podium of the presidential
elections.
We're not in the elections to prettify this corrupt
parliamentary system. It's called the foundation of
"democracy." But when Corporate America says "democracy" they
mean the rule of a tiny wealthy class over the vast
majority.
That's why only a Democrat or Republican with access to
tens of millions of dollars from the coffers of big business
can hope to take office.
While the media make the capitalist elections front-page
news, we are raising our revolutionary voice--the voice of
struggle--in order to reach all those within our earshot.
A vote for two socialist women-of-color candidates
registers as a protest vote against capitalism.
This powerful struggle to shut down the IMF and World Bank
meetings is another kind of protest vote against capitalist
globalization and its crimes.
It's a vote with your feet in the streets. Workers World
Party is right there with you.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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