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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 9, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Moorehead-La Riva campaign in Wisconsin
Candidates find growing interest in socialism
By Workers World
Milwaukee bureau
As George W. Bush and Al Gore battle to determine which rich white male will be the next chief administrator for the U.S. ruling class, each blames the other's party for every problem in the country.
But in late October, two women--both of them workers and union members, one African American and the other Chicana--brought a different message to the people of Wisconsin and Illinois. The real problem, they said, is capitalism; the solution is socialism; and the way to get there is through mass struggle.
From Oct. 25-28, Workers World Party presidential candidate Monica Moorehead and vice-presidential candidate Gloria La Riva visited Milwaukee, Madison, Stevens Point, La Crosse, Racine and the Menominee Nation reservation in Wisconsin, along with Chicago in neighboring Illinois.
Wherever they spoke--at meetings of students, workers, community activists, homeless women and men, and even with local media--they found a noticeably higher level of interest and receptiveness than just four years ago, when they made a similar campaign tour. In 1996, Moorehead and La Riva received more Wisconsin votes than any other socialist candidates.
"I think it was the combination of the new youth movement that exploded on the scene in Seattle, plus the openness to new politics that is shown by the growth of the Nader-LaDuke candidacies," said one Wisconsin WWP organizer. "Lots of young people are opening up to activism and some are willing to look at really radical solutions."
This interest was shown by the sales of political literature at campaign stops, such as Fidel Castro's "Capitalism in Crisis," Workers World newspaper and "Introduction to Marxism," a short study guide prepared by local organizers for the tour.
Several young people said they would like to attend classes on Marxism and asked about attending the Dec. 2-3 WWP national conference in New York.
Wisconsin's prison crisis
The tour began Oct. 25 with a Third Party Presidential Forum at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The event was sponsored by the UWM Progressive Student Network. It opened with a presentation by Iyad Afalqa of the Muslim Student Association, who expressed his organization's strong solidarity with the intensifying struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination.
Moorehead's remarks described the death penalty and the prison-industrial complex's growth as two of the most important forms of racial profiling in the United States. The WWP campaign's focus is fighting racism and racist repression.
The prison issue has special meaning in Wisconsin, where the prison population has doubled in the last five years--one of the sharpest increases in the country. Wisconsin now imprisons Black people at twice the national average and leads the country in sending inmates to out-of-state prisons.
The incarceration rate for women is also increasing at an astounding rate. It rose 12 percent between early August and late September alone.
La Riva described how she, as a young student of color, was inspired by the militant struggle for affirmative action that made it possible for her to attend Brandeis University. After getting involved in the student movement, she made the decision to devote her life to revolutionary activism. This year she became the first North American to address a May Day rally in Havana, Cuba.
'No kinder, gentler capitalism'
Commenting on the growing support for Green Party candidates Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke in Wisconsin, Moorehead praised their strong anti-corporate message but explained, "There is no such thing as a kinder, gentler capitalism." That remark got the strongest applause of the evening.
"Our party believes that only the independent mass struggle, demanding fundamental change, can make the difference," she said.
Moorehead urged those in attendance to mobilize for the Jan. 20 counter-inauguration protest in Washington to demand an end to the racist death penalty and freedom for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The next day, La Riva traveled to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point campus for a meeting sponsored by the Women's Resource Center and the Peaceful Activist Organization. She also visited La Crosse, a multinational, working-class city on the Mississippi River that's been hard hit by recent plant shutdowns and layoffs. The Women's Studies Department at UW-La Crosse sponsored the meeting.
Moorehead was in Madison, the state capitol, that day, giving media interviews and meeting with local activists.
Wisconsin is one of a handful of states where Bush and Gore are in a dead heat and the Nader vote could be a deciding factor. On Oct. 26, the Democratic Party held a mass rally at the State Capitol. Hundreds of Nader supporters gathered nearby with signs and banners.
Statewide Green Party coordinator Ben Manski invited Moorehead to address the crowd. To strong applause, she praised young Green Party activists for standing strong in the face of mounting pressure to abandon their third party bid. Moorehead emphasized the necessity to take up the fight against racism here at home and against U.S. imperialist intervention overseas.
Welcomed by Menominee Nation
On Oct. 27 La Riva traveled upstate for a presentation at the College of the Menominee Nation on the Menominee Nation reservation.
One student, commenting on the egalitarianism and communalism of early Native societies, said that "Native Americans were the first socialists." Another asked for a copy of the "Communist Manifesto." A third said that, although she had a master's degree, she had learned more from La Riva's visit than she did during her entire schooling.
Meanwhile, Moorehead spoke at Chicago's New World Resource Center at a public meeting sponsored by the local WWP branch. There were presentations on the intensifying struggles in Palestine and Colombia.
President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak are due in Chicago Nov. 13. WWP activists urged those at the meeting to support a protest that day called by Arab-American organizations.
Oct. 28 began with Moorehead as the invited speaker at the weekly meeting of Repairers of the Breach, an organization of homeless and at-risk people that operates a day center on Milwaukee's North Side. Moorehead's statement that jobs, housing and health care are rights, and her call for a $15-per-hour minimum wage, received strong applause and support.
The next stop was a "Meet the candidates" meeting at the International Building in the heart of Milwaukee's Latino community, followed by a similar gathering at Sweet Black Coffee, a new Black-owned poetry and jazz cafe in the multinational Riverwest community. At both events, young people expressed interest in hearing more about WWP's socialist program. Sweet Black Coffee's program director invited the organizers to come back often and hold similar events.
The tour ended with both candidates participating in a Progressive Political Forum at Cross Lutheran Church, a multinational, politically-active church in Milwaukee's Black community. The forum, organized by the newly-formed Committee for Community Politics, also featured local representatives of the Green Party, Socialist Party and Natural Law Party.
During their visit the candidates were interviewed by local and statewide newspapers, TV and radio. The Wisconsin campaign effort is being coordinated by the A Job is a Right Campaign, a Milwaukee-based organization of labor and community activists.
For more information on the Moorehead-La Riva campaign, visit the Web site www.vote4workers.org.
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