Workers World Party election campaign
Candidates spread message of revolutionary hope
By Minnie Bruce Pratt
On Nov. 3, the morning after Election Day, Republican
President George W. Bush awoke to victory and Democratic
candidate Sen. John Kerry to defeat. But John Parker, Teresa
Gutierrez and LeiLani Dowell--the 2004 candidates of Workers
World Party--got up to begin another hope-filled and determined
day of struggle toward socialism.
Parker and Gutierrez, who ran for president and
vice-president, and Dowell, a congressional candidate in
California, had crisscrossed the U.S. since they kicked off
their national tour in New York City on Sept. 18. By Nov. 1,
they had visited 24 cities in 17 states.
Reached at his home in Los Angeles, where he had just
returned on a red-eye flight after his last appearance, Parker
said the impact of the WWP campaign was hope: "Everywhere we
met people who were so beat up by capitalism that they knew it
was wrong. We were able to tell them that there is an
alternative, there really is a way out--through socialism."
For the struggle, not votes
Parker stressed the campaign had been about building a
movement. The message throughout was: "Real social change
happens through class struggle, not elections."
WWP ran a slate of fighters against imperialism and racism.
Parker, Gutierrez and Dowell also carry in their lives, and in
their political philosophy, a full knowledge of the
interconnection of special oppressions and class struggle.
Parker, who is African American, put together his first
union drive at 18, at a small steel plant in New Jersey. He is
a co-director of the International Action Center in Los Angeles
and a leader in the antiwar movement and union struggles there.
On Nov. 7, he addressed an IAC rally in Los Angeles that
brought out 10,000 people against the U.S. war on Iraq.
Gutierrez, an out and proud lesbian, became politically
active in the Chican@ movement in Texas. A major organizer of
the movement in solidarity with revolutionary Cuba, she has
also traveled widely to meet with progressive forces in Colom
bia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.
She is a national co-director of the IAC.
In stark contrast to the anti-gay stands of both Bush and
Kerry, the Workers World ticket also boasted candidate LeiLani
Dowell, who ran for Congress in San Francisco. Dowell, a
26-year-old lesbian of African American and Hawaiian descent,
said: "We are waging a campaign against the bankruptcy of the
capitalist system."
In a Democrat-dominated district, Dowell garnered one-third
the number of votes drawn by her Republican opponent, despite
his spending 50 times more.
Coast to coast for socialism
For two months Parker, Gutierrez and Dowell traveled
nonstop--from Vermont in the Northeast to New Mexico in the
Southwest. They visited San Diego, Atlanta and the Piedmont of
South and North Carolina. They held meetings in the "swing
state" of Michigan, and in the District of Columbia that is
still fighting to become a state in the teeth of racist
opposition.
They marched for immigrant rights in Los Angeles on Oct.
16--and then flew cross-country all night to participate in the
Million Worker March in Washington, D.C., the next day. From
house meetings to homeless shelters, from centers for the
disabled to high schools and colleges, from coffee houses to
peace centers, they brought their socialist message to
thousands of people.
Gutierrez recalled how many people had told them about the
brutal impact of capitalism on their lives--of having to hold
two or three jobs to simply exist, or being laid off, or being
pushed into homelessness. They met families without health
care, single mothers without child care, students crushed under
debt trying to get education, immigrants hounded by racist
bigots and targeted by the U.S. government.
The U.S. war on Iraq, the possibility of a draft that might
take them or their children, and the lack of living-wage jobs
were on everyone's minds.
Parker, who once taught in the public schools of Newark,
N.J., remembered a teacher in Charlotte, N.C., who told of the
decline of his school, once one of the best, under budget cuts.
The teacher emphasized that Bush's No Child Left Behind Act was
making matters worse, with "failing" schools being punished,
and funds going to schools in wealthy districts with the
resources to succeed.
In North Carolina, a "right to work" state, a young woman
told Parker how she was fired from her job simply for using her
computer to pay a utility bill online during her lunch
hour.
But always uplifting in these meetings, each candidate
stressed, was the dedication to struggle---from the young
African American women who organized a demonstration for
political prisoner and former Black Panther Kamau Sadiki, to
the homeless men who run their own shelter in Atlanta, helping
each other out.
Dowell told how young high school students in San Francisco,
supposedly "troubled," were so politically ardent that she put
aside her prepared speech to answer their rapid-fire questions.
One young woman, very angry and clear, said, "This government
has nothing for me. What can we do?"
Revolutionary hope
The inspiration in these meetings, according to Gutierrez,
was that all who came were "searching for class truth." She
said, "Though many were new to the politics of class struggle,
they knew that neither Bush nor Kerry were the answer. Because
of their hard lives and hard conditions, they were serious
about finding a way to change things.
"In addition, there were people at the meetings who were
already political, who agreed with our politics, but who also
needed our revolutionary hope."
Gutierrez continued: "Many came because they doubted a vote
for Kerry would stop Bush, and they wanted to know what would
make a difference. We were able to bring Workers World Party's
program to them, to strengthen their understanding of class
struggle, and to say that the election on Nov. 2 is not the
deciding factor, but rather what happens the rest of the time,
as we build an independent people's movement."
For Dowell, the meetings were filled with "revolutionary
optimism." She believes that the working-class people who
attended, who are living under the big guns of capitalism,
received a message about socialism that will "really
stick."
Parker agreed, saying, "People are so beaten down. They need
inspiration, and also the hope that comes from seeing others
out in the streets protesting."
Campaign lessons
All three candidates agreed that it was crucial to take
socialist ideas into all regions of the U.S. Gutierrez
stressed: "We must be bold. We are not leaving any worker to
the ruling class. We want to get out and win every single
one!"
She spoke of how important it is to talk about socialism in
a direct way, and relate it to the conditions people are living
in right now. This approach not only made socialism attractive
to their audiences, but it also helped show how socialism is
actually possible, how it can happen in the U.S.
A highlight of the trip for Gutierrez was a young African
American man from Baltimore, who asked the candidates a
challenging question: What had made them political activists,
and what kept them going year after year in the struggle?
Both Parker and Gutierrez said that reading the "Communist
Manifesto" had put their individual experiences in perspective.
They explained how the long view of Marxism gave them hope.
The feedback they got from people across the country showed
that capitalism can't meet the needs of workers and oppressed
peoples, Dowell commented. This is what will drive them to rise
up, boot out the bosses and plan production to meet the needs
of all.
After all the Cold War propaganda, concluded Parker: "Almost
no one said anything negative about communism or any socialist
country. They understood quickly what we were saying about
socialism. When we pointed out the profit motive---the reason
for the U.S. going to war, the reason their jobs are being
lost--they recognized the need for socialism.
"We ended the campaign seeing that the suffering is so
great, if the right conditions happen, it won't be long before
folks start revolting against this system."
Reprinted from the Nov. 18, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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