As Democrats fail the state
FIST organizes in West Virginia
By David Hoskins
Charleston, W. Va.
West Virginians are switching political parties in
increasing numbers. What used to be a stronghold for the
Democratic Party has now gone twice for George W. Bush. In the
2004 election, Bush trumped his Democratic challenger, John
Kerry, by 13 percentage points. In addition, Repub licans
picked up two statewide offices and made inroads in the State
Senate.
The Democrats are in crisis mode. State party chair Nick
Casey has decided that, instead of standing up for working
people, the electoral solution for Democrats lies in mimicking
the reactionary social policies of the Republican Party.
Democrats have dominated the state legislature, the
governorship and state wide offices for decades. Yet during
that time the Democrats oversaw decades of human suffering,
with high unemployment and poverty and poor educational
opportunities and healthcare for the state's workers.
A quick perusal of any search engine will turn up the
failures of Democratic rule. West Virginia ranks close to the
bottom of child poverty ratings, with almost 27 percent of its
children living below the poverty line. When this number is
broken down by county, the disparity becomes even more obvious.
Eleven counties have child poverty rates above 30 percent.
A few counties' rates approximate those in underdeveloped
capitalist nations. McDowell County has a child poverty rate of
over 52 percent and Webster County's rate exceeds 45 percent.
The healthcare and education sectors fare no better. Over 70
percent of fourth graders perform below average math and
reading levels and 43,000 children in West Virginia lack health
insurance.
West Virginians are right to reject the Democratic Party and
its years of broken pro mises. Democrats offer no solutions for
the poor children of McDowell and Webster counties. The answer
to their legi timate grievances, however, is not to be found in
the Republican Party. In fact, Republicans are likely to
exacerbate the problem by pursuing a program of tax cuts for
wealthy out-of-state corporations combined with cuts in social
welfare spending for the state's residents.
This is no solution for the dispossessed of Appalachia. The
answer for the working class of West Virginia is a social
revolution that overthrows capitalist property relations and
replaces the corporate state with a revolutionary workers'
democracy.
With this goal in mind, students at West Virginia State
University have taken the first concrete step toward mobilizing
this state's youth and working people. The first meeting of
FIST--Fight Imperialism, Stand Together--took place on Dec. 7.
Students rallied around an agenda that incorporated the
struggles at home and abroad into a single rallying cry against
U.S. imperialism. Student speakers discussed the anti-war
struggle, the struggles in Haiti and Palestine, and the fight
of coal miners and the United Mine Workers at the Cannelton
mines. Two coal miners attended the meeting and discussed their
struggle and ways in which students can participate.
Word spread and the organization began to grow even before
the first meeting as students were forced to fight back against
a school administration that harassed key activists and
vandalized FIST fliers. As in any struggle, the fightback
shifted the consciousness of those involved, as student
organizers worked overtime to deal with a flood of interest on
the campus.
What may seem like a small victory has had real
repercussions on the WVSU campus. Student activists are not
satisfied, either. They have made a commitment to return next
semester ready to fight both for themselves and for the workers
and poor children of Appalachia. This is only the first step in
the struggle for justice in West Virginia.
Reprinted from the Dec. 23, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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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