Workers World Dec. 21, 2000: Excerpts from a talk by Marsha Goldberg

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------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Dec. 21, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------

Two women of color for president and vice president

From a talk by Marsha Goldberg at the Dec. 2-3 Workers World Party conference.

Monica Moorehead & Gloria La Riva--two leaders of our party, two women of color who are central to all the other work we are doing--were able to put themselves out there as our presidential and vice-presidential candidates and speak for the workers and the oppressed in the elections.
We ended up with so much to do this year: being in the streets and the jails as part of the new movement; filling Madison Square Garden for Mumia Abu-Jamal; doing everything we could to try to stop Bush from executing Shaka Sankofa; organizing a big delegation to Cuba; and so much more.
It's really great that with all this we didn't give up being in the elections, even if it meant doing it in a more limited way. Because we are in a battle of ideas with the ruling class and we are fighting to be heard.
As a Marxist party we use the elections as an arena of struggle to get our ideas out to people who we aren't usually able to reach. People pay attention to what you're saying if you're running for president and vice president.
And wherever the candidates went throughout this campaign, they were able to clarify the issues and give a Marxist explanation of what was happening: Yugoslavia, Palestine, Vieques, Iraq, Cuba, Colombia, the Million Family March, the Nader movement, the wo men's and lesbian/gay/bi/trans movements.
Our candidates raised the battle against racism and the death penalty and the fight to stop the execution of Mumia as top issues and laid the basis for launching the mobilization to go to Washington on Jan. 20 for the anti-inaugural protest.
The fact that the campaign defended socialism was a big victory for us. We were able to break ground with our election campaign that will help us to deepen our influence in the progressive movement, this newly emerging movement and eventually with wider layers of workers and oppressed peoples.
The election campaign gave us the opportunity to show what really brings all the struggles together. It gave us the opportunity to show the Party's program. And it gave us the opportunity to show our identity as a revolutionary party.
So it's really great that comrades and friends were able to do all the petitioning and whatever else it took to get WWP listed on the ballot in Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Washington and Florida.
Being on the ballot in four states enabled us to do tremendous outreach--and not just in those states.
We were on the list of candidates on all the Internet search engines and a number of sites that linked to our web site. In the two days before the election and on Election Day we got 20,000 hits on our Web site.
We received e-mails from all across the country expressing support for the campaign and asking for materials to distribute.
In just those four states we got almost 5,000 votes. These are protest votes against the capitalist system. They are very valuable to us, even though we don't know who all of them are. We want to figure out creative ways to reach out and find them and others beyond the electoral arena to help build the Party.

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