OPINION: Oppose The Racist Candidates Of The Democrat and Republican Parties

By STEVEN ARGUE

For Socialism and the Power of the Multiracial Working Class

[Photo: Campaign billboard Rick Tyler, Congressional candidate for Tennessee’s 3rd district. The campaign slogan “Make America white again” is of course a more honest version of Trump’s “Make America great again”.]

While Trump is more open about his racism than Hillary Clinton, Hillary offers no solutions. Worse than that, she is part of the racist establishment having backed Bill Clinton’s “end of welfare as we know it” and Bill Clinton’s crime bill that put 100,000 new cops on the street and rapidly escalated the mass incarceration of poor, black, and brown people in the United States. So rabid was Hillary Clinton’s support for her husband’s repressive measures that she spread the corporate media’s racist myth of young Black male “super-predators”. In addition, there is no indication that Hillary Clinton has broken from her husband’s other brutal racist acts including his failure to pardon political prisoners like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal, his unprovoked raid and subsequent slaughter of the multiracial men, women, and children at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco Texas, and his starvation blockade of Iraq that murdered well over half-a-million dehumanized brown people. In fact, Hillary Clinton’s vote for Bush’s invasion of Iraq is another indication that she holds the same racist disregard for human life.

Obama’s administration, which Hillary served in, also waged wars against brown peoples around the world including Libya and Syria, cut SNAP (food stamp) programs, and escalated mass deportations to levels never seen before under any other president. Far from opposing any of this, she gloated over the rape and murder of Muammar Gaddafi saying, “we came, we saw, and we killed” while at the same time advocating an escalation in the U.S. war against Syria’s government in a manner that will likely bring the genocidal and anti-woman wahhabist forces of ISIS and its allies to power, if successful.

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ike Trump and Clinton, Bernie Sanders always had many problems as well, including his vote to back the racist frame-up of Assata Shakur, his vote in favor of Bill Clinton’s racist crime bill, and his consistent votes for arming racist apartheid Israel. At the same time, his proposals for free health care and free education would improve the life expectancy and opportunities for black, brown, poor, and working class people in general. It would have also cut into Wall Street profits, and this is why his campaign was defeated through numerous dirty tricks by the establishment in general as well as the Democrat Party itself that used outright electoral fraud to defeat him. Yet, whatever lesser evil people may have thought Sanders to be, he is now officially out of the race and has said he is voting for Hillary Clinton. The fight at the Democratic National Convention, he has said, is for the platform of the Democrat Party. Yet, the Democrat Party’s platform is non-binding, meaningless, and not worth anyone’s time. This then all simply becomes a maneuver to try to corral more of the left behind the racist, imperialist, and anti-working class campaign of Hillary Clinton.

As opposed to participating in this swamp of racist bourgeois politics and attempting to select some lesser evil, the Revolutionary Tendency advocates no vote for the racist Democrat or Republican parties and gives critical support to the presidential candidacy of Monica Moorehead & Lamont Lilly of the Workers World Party. The following is their 10 point program to end the racist war on Black and Brown people, save the planet, establish a socialist society, and advance the situation of the multiracial working class in general. While the Revolutionary Tendency has some differences with this program, it is in its great majority good and has earned our critical support on its merits:

1. End the war on Black people. Reparations now. Stand with and defend the Black Lives Matter Movement.

We stand in solidarity with and support the demands of the Black Lives Matter uprising, including jailing killer cops, abolishing the police and the historic necessity of reparations for Black people here and worldwide. Black, Brown and Indigenous peoples have the right to fight racist oppression by any means necessary. The rebellions in Baltimore and Ferguson were righteous acts of indignation and should be defended by the working-class movement.

2. End racism. Support self-determination for Black, Latino/a, Indigenous, Asian and Arab peoples.

The U.S. has a long history of violating the rights of the oppressed. The southwest part of this country was stolen from Mexico, creating an internal colony of Mexican/Chicano people. Genocide and robbery of the lands of Native people are part and parcel of the brutal history of the U.S. Japanese Americans experienced criminal internment camps, and Filipinos in the U.S. suffer tremendous exploitation here and in their homeland. Chinese people were made indentured servants to build this country’s railroads. And Puerto Rico and Hawaii were overthrown and lost their sovereignty.

3. Abolish capitalism – fight for a socialist revolution.

Capitalism cannot be reformed. We need revolutionary socialism – a system of people’s power, where the worker and oppressed peoples, not the banks and corporations, own and control everything, where the needs of the 99% are filled, not profit for the 1%. Although progressive changes should be supported, they do not go far enough; the whole rotten system must be overturned. With the profit drive eliminated and the power in the hands of the masses of people who create society’s wealth, great advances are possible. Everyone can have a job at a living wage or guaranteed income for those who can’t work. Everyone can have free, quality health care, free, quality education through college, affordable housing, and the infrastructure can be repaired. All the ills created by capitalism can finally begin to be dismantled once human needs, not corporate greed, are society’s central organizing principle.

4. Stop the deportations and raids. Full rights for all migrants. End Islamophobia. Open the borders for people; close the borders for profiteers and warmongers.

No worker is illegal, whether they are from Mexico, Honduras, Syria, Haiti or anywhere. What must be illegal is the role of U.S. corporations and the military in provoking instability and imposing misery, causing people from those countries to seek refuge. No racist attacks on immigrants and Muslims. Every migrant should be accorded full civil and human rights. Shut down U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Instead of building walls on the U.S./Mexican border, open the borders for free and safe travel. Stop the so-called drug war that creates horrific conditions of incarceration and violence and fills the bankers’ coffers.

5. Food, water, housing, clothing, health care, education and childcare for all. Solidarity with homeless people. Moratorium NOW! to stop all foreclosures, evictions, utility shut-offs. Justice for the people of Flint, Mich. Free education for all, full funding for public schools. Job training with a stipend. Cancel student debt. Defend the right of student athletes to strike for a living wage.

No one in the world’s wealthiest country should be hungry. Restore and expand all food programs. Free, clean water is a human right. Capitalist housing creates wealthy landlords and gentrification, a new form of colonialism. We want permanent, quality, affordable housing for all. Abolish health-care-for-profit and replace it with a publicly owned health care system with free medical and dental care. Jail the pharmaceutical profiteers. Quality public education is being systematically eliminated via forced testing, Common Core and charter schools. Young people, especially youth of color, are denied education and sent to prison in ever increasing numbers. College should be free. Student debt, the trillions of dollars the federal government and banks are robbing from millions of workers, should be immediately cancelled.

6. Women need full liberation in all facets of society. Equal pay for comparable work. Reproductive justice, including the right to abortion. Restore all welfare programs. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer liberation now. Stop the murders of trans women. Full rights for all queer people.

We demand equal pay for equivalent work. Women’s control of their own bodies requires full reproductive rights: free, legal, accessible abortion, birth control, no forced sterilization and full support needed to raise healthy children. Abuse, rape, incest and violence must end. Fully funded safe houses are needed. Stop the objectification and commodification of women. Federal law banning anti-LGBTQ discrimination is urgent. End the murders of transgender women of color; support the calls for LGBTQ people to leave the military and for LGBTQ communities fighting displacement and gentrification. Demand access to employment and health care that is sensitive to LGBTQ people; resources devoted to eliminating LGBTQ youth homelessness; and the right of all LGBTQ people to define their families. We support LGBTQ people in the fight for self-determination, trans and gender liberation, and against co-optation of LGBTQ issues such as “pinkwashing” by Israel.

7. Change the system, not the climate. Make the Pentagon and oil corporations pay for the destruction of the planet. Reparations for climate victims of Hurricane Katrina and elsewhere. Immediate support for climate refugees. Free the land!

Global warming and its destruction fueled by profit-driven corporations is not a future problem; it’s here now. Millions of people are affected by loss of homes and livelihoods. And poor communities – already exposed to racial and class exploitation – are the most affected in the U.S. and worldwide. The banks, multinational corporations and the Pentagon– the world’s worst polluter – must be held accountable. But we can’t wait for them to stop climate change. We need socialism. Only a socialist system can handle the worldwide crisis of rising sea levels, droughts, extreme weather, lack of food and water, etc. The number one sustainable country in the world is a socialist one: Cuba. All of humanity, including non-human species, is at risk, and only extreme measures can save us and other species. Socialism is the only system capable of taking those measures.

8. Defeat imperialism. Shut down the Pentagon. U.S. hands off Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Build international solidarity!

U.S. imperialism has 1,000 military bases and the largest military budget in history- all to impose capitalist domination globally. We oppose all U.S. wars, invasions, occupations and drone attacks, regardless of the media lies and justifications. We oppose sanctions, economic destabilizations and all U.S. “free trade” agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which breaks unions, wrecks the environment and violates national sovereignty. We demand independence, reparations for countries like Haiti and canceling the debt from Puerto Rico to Africa to Greece. We oppose NATO, the war on Syria and the encirclement of Russia and China, threats against People’s Korea and the revolutionary movement in Venezuela. We demand justice for the Ayotzinapa 43 and an end to the drug war in Mexico and everywhere. We support the Palestinian people’s full national liberation, sovereignty and right to return. We call for an end to all U.S. aid to Israel and all reactionary governments worldwide.

9. Full employment and decent jobs or income for all regardless of race, religion, age, gender, disability or arrest history. End all forms of austerity worldwide. Support the movement for $15 and a union. Abolish “right to work” (for less) laws. Repeal Taft Hartley. Stop killing disabled people, especially those with emotional disabilities.

Wall Street owes the people for the destruction the 1% has caused. Stop privatization and defend pensions. A trillion dollar plan is needed to rebuild cities like Detroit and Baltimore that have been destroyed by criminal predatory lending and capitalist restructuring that eliminated millions of union jobs. Workers produce all of society’s wealth, yet only get back a small fraction in wages. A fighting union for every worker. All workers have the right to strike. Equal opportunity in transportation, housing, education and employment for people with disabilities, and accessible wheelchair ramps, elevators and buses to provide equal access. Minimum wage laws must include disabled people, who sometimes earn only 22 cents an hour. Cops who kill with impunity disabled people of color and disabled LGBTQ people, particularly the emotionally and psychologically disabled, must be brought to justice. We demand a system where all contribute according to their abilities and receive according to their needs.

10. End the prison-industrial complex and mass incarcerations of Black and Latino youth. Abolish solitary confinement and the death penalty. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Ana Belen Montes, Leonard Peltier, Oscar López Rivera, Rev. Edward Pinkney, Aafia Siddiqui, Rasmea Odeh and all political prisoners. Stop FBI harassment of activists.

Prisons are internment camps for working-class people, especially Black, Brown and Indigenous peoples. Tear down the prison walls! People who are incarcerated need housing, job training, health care, and social services, none of which are offered in prison camps or the probation system. The GEO Group, Corrections Corporation of America and detention centers for immigrants should be shut down. Dismantle ICE and release all immigrant detainees. Meanwhile, prisoner demands for decent food, an end to solitary confinement, minimum wage for labor, etc., must be met. The U.S. government has systematically attacked freedom fighters who organize and fight for a more just society. Free them all! Stop FBI harassment of activists. Stop NSA spying programs, government surveillance and sabotage of political movements.

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