independentsforkerry.org

IPR contacted the Socialist Equality Party’s  presidential nominee Jerry White with three questions about his campaign.  Though White did respond initially, party chairman Joe Kishore answered instead.

The Socialist Equality Party is a Trotskyist party affiliated with the International Committee of the Fourth International. In 2008, it nominated Jerry White, who was also the party’s 1996 presidential nominee.  In protest of ballot access laws, the party did not appear on any ballots in 2008.

IPR: How is the Socialist Equality Party different from other Socialist parties such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Socialist Party USA?

Kishore: There are many groups that describe themselves as socialist, and we will be writing more on these tendencies in our election coverage. There are, however, basic political differences that separate the SEP from these organizations. The SEP, for example, advocates a break with the official trade unions and the establishment of independent rank-and-file committees to fight against the dictates of the corporations. We oppose any conception that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left. Our program is based on an international perspective. We oppose identity politics, which seeks to divide workers along racial or gender lines, rather than uniting them on the basis of their common class interests. A more detailed presentation of the perspective of the SEP can be found in our program (socialequality.com/program) and in our statement of principles (http://socialequality.com/story/socialist-equality-party-statement-principles).

IPR: The Socialist Equality Party did not appear on any state ballots for the 2008 presidential election.  Will this change in 2012? Are there any ballot access efforts at this time?

Kishore: We will be seeking ballot access in some states. However, anti-democratic ballot  laws make it almost impossible for third parties to get ballot access in many states. In those cases, we will be running an aggressive write-in campaign.

IPR: What are some of your policy proposals? How would you implement these as president?

Kishore: The basic outline of our election can be found here: http://socialequality.com/node/2059

We insist that workers have basic social rights, including the right to a job, the right to a livable income, the right to education, health care and a secure retirement. We call for a multi-trillion dollar public works program to put to work everyone who needs a job. Such a program will also serve to rebuild cities and infrastructure and meet the needs of the entire population. It must be paid for through a massive redistribution of the wealth. The giant banks and major corporations must be transformed into publicly-owned entities, controlled democratically by working people.

Two points to stress, however: 1) It is not for us a matter of simply winning office and implementing policy as one person. The entire political system is undemocratic and devoted to upholding the interests of the capitalist class. Our election campaign is aimed at fighting for an independent political program of the working class, in opposition to this political system. We are fighting to build a mass movement of the working class, which seeks the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by a social system based on human need, not private profit–i.e., socialism. Socialism can only be achieved through mass social struggles. 2) We fight for the international unity of the working class. The interests of workers in every country are fundamentally the same, and socialism is impossible in the United States alone.

Independent Political Report

Obama’s State of the Union – Too Little Too Late

by Stewart Alexander, 2012 Socialist Party USA Presidential Candidate

The phrase that came to mind immediately upon hearing President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech is “too little, too late.” After spending the last few years coddling the banks and the richest 1%, Obama has the nerve to now call for “economic fairness.” To him, this means tweaking payroll taxes and making a rhetorical call to reverse the Bush tax cuts for the rich. For working people in America real fairness means the right to a job, a guarantee of healthcare for all and an end to the Military Industrial Complex. Obama won’t deliver this. That’s why I am running for President against him.

Job creation has been and will continue to be the most obvious way that Obama has sold out working people throughout America. These decisions were made early on in his administration when he made the conscious decision to pour billions of dollars into the Banks that had funded his campaign instead of using those funds to create an emergency employment program to put people back to work. The result is that Americans have experienced nearly three consecutive years of more than 9% unemployment and nearly double that when those workers who given up looking for jobs are counted. This has meant real human suffering for millions of people.

Although Obama has hailed the recent decline in these same unemployment rates, a closer look at the numbers reveal the hollowness of his claims. Economist Doug Henwood has paged through the Unemployment report and discovered that much of the reduction is due to the effects of holiday seasonal employment and, in particular, a shift to online purchasing for Christmas gifts. Of the 200,000 jobs created in December, some 42,000, or over 1/5, came from the hiring of extra couriers and messengers. Bars, restaurants and healthcare companies picked up the bulk of the rest of the new hires. Hardly the manner in which we want to grow the economy.

The jobs program that the Alexander/Mendoza 2012 campaign is proposing calls for the creation of a Full Employment economy. We have a three-pronged approach. First, we want to create an Emergency Jobs Program that will put millions of workers back to work immediately in fields like environmental cleanup, infrastructure creation and maintenance, and education. Second, we support proposals to publicly fund a worker owned and managed cooperative sector. This will serve to not only put people back to work, but to re-build the manufacturing capacity of our country. Finally, we want to fund job training programs that lead to job sharing or job splitting, where workers will work less yet retain the same amount of pay and benefits.

A serious restructuring of the tax code that allows us to take back the wealth created by our work and accumulated by the 1% is key to funding our job creation plan. We want more than Obama’s proposed payroll tax cut. We deserve more than just reversing Bush’s economically suicidal tax breaks for the rich. We need a radical restructuring of the way in which we think about wealth. The great riches of this society need to be put to use to help us all – to make life better for the 99% and create new opportunities for work, relaxation and community.

This is why we propose creating a progressive tax structure where the rich pay far more than the average working person. In a democratic socialist society neither Obama nor Romney would be allowed to pay an effective tax rate of 26% and 17% respectively. Corporate taxation, financial gains taxes and personal income taxes will be modernized – all loopholes will be closed and the rich will pay a steep tax on their income. This is what economic fairness looks like to a socialist.

If Obama’s proposals for “Economic Fairness” are hard to believe, his attempt to present his Presidency as one of peace is simply a farce. The hands of the Obama administration are dripping with blood. He has approved a brutal Drone war on the people of Pakistan that has resulted in massive civilian casualties. He has accelerated the war in Afghanistan, which has increased casualties among soldiers and terrorized the civilian population driving them into the political arms of the Taliban. And Obama has continued to take an aggressive political stance on Iran thereby moving the country closer to another war.

All this, plus a clear continuation of the Bush era security state policies. Obama’s approval of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) annihilates centuries of civil rights protections. The President now has the right to indefinitely jail any citizen in the America without having to work within the protections of habeas corpus. Added to the NDAA is the fact that, as I write this, Bradley Manning is rotting in a jail cell. Manning is Obama’s prisoner – a moral testament to the President’s commitment to continue the job of restricting civil liberties.

My campaign is staunchly anti-militarist. This means that I commit to bringing the troops home now through the elimination of all foreign occupations and the closing of all foreign military bases and I aim to dismantle the Military Industrial Complex. My campaign calls for an immediate 50% reduction in military spending. We think that democratic socialism offers the best hope for the creation of a world based on peace and solidarity. Eliminating the security state will move us a long way in that direction. America should be a model for civil liberties not a test case for how many rights can be restricted.

I am writing this also to encourage voters to take a serious look at my campaign. They will find that socialist politics are clearly distinct from the politics of the 1% peddled by politicians such as Obama, Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. Under their leadership, the State of the Union is neutered – reduced to an exercise in cheerleading for the politicians that have faithfully towed the line for their corporate benefactors. The proposals of the Alexander/Mendoza campaign are made in the interest of the 99%. We think Americans deserve a clear choice come November. We will be working hard to make that possible. Join us in making a demand for jobs, peace and freedom in 2012!

Independent Political Report

Posted at socialism.com:

In response to a rigged political system, New York City FSP Organizer Stephen Durham and feminist immigrant rights advocate Christina López are running a national write-in campaign.

Inroducing the FSP candidates:

Stephen Durham for president

Stephen Durham brings abundant experience and a generous heart to the electoral arena. Dedicated to changing conditions at their root, he is a lifelong radical in the best sense of the word.

In the 1970s and ’80s Durham, now 64, was the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) organizer in Los Angeles; he has since guided the New York City branch.

From the party’s storefront in Central Harlem, it’s a short subway ride to the international heart of capitalism. Durham has ridden that train many a time to confront the corrupt financial elite — in recent months, often to march with Occupy Wall Street and conduct teach-ins on economics.

Durham was radicalized as a student and campus worker at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB), where he participated in the movement against the Vietnam War and became a conscientious objector. He also stood shoulder to shoulder with students of color in the historic battle for Third World Studies at UCB.

As a pioneering queer activist, he took part in the first national lesbian and gay conference in 1969. A consistent advocate of women’s rights and supporter of female leadership, Durham fights to keep feminist issues up front in all the movements.

Durham became a union militant while working as a waiter in California and then New York City. He provided rank-and-file leadership in the 1985 NYC Hotel Trades Council strike by 16,000 workers, predominantly people of color, women, and immigrants.

Durham’s long involvement in Latin America began during high school as an exchange student to Brazil during the military dictatorship. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, he has traveled in Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean, building bonds and joint work with other leftists and revolutionaries.

Running for New York State Assembly in 1998, Durham campaigned door to door in the largely Latino and African American 71st District. His campaign was endorsed by Puerto Rican activist Father Luis Barrios, longtime Harlem radical Yuri Kochiyama, former state Assemblywoman Marie Runyon, and Haitian immigrant rights advocate Ray LaForest, among others.

A thinker as well as a doer, Durham has written on topics from the AIDS crisis to the Cuban Revolution, from freeing Lynne Stewart to the environmental disaster of hydraulic fracking.

Now Durham brings his global perspective and decades of valuable political experience to a working-class campaign for president.

Christina López for vice president

Christina López is a dynamic, eloquent Chicana from the barrio in Phoenix, whose working-class family has roots in the Southwest that predate U.S. borders.

She has been an organizer since her youth. As a member of the Chicano student group MEChA, she worked against a racist English-only law in Arizona.

After moving to Seattle, López was drawn to the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) by its emphasis on fighting for racial liberation as an essential component of building class solidarity. She has spread this message and challenged racism through extensive work defending immigrant rights, affirmative action, and freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Her deep involvement in the immigrant rights upsurge of 2006 and 2007 included opposing the profoundly flawed “guest worker” bill. She has spearheaded protests against police brutality and worked with Somali women to protest FBI raids.

In jobs ranging from production at Revlon Cosmetics to county court clerk and library associate, López has been a member of several unions including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.

Recently her activism in the Occupy movement has extended from Philadelphia to Seattle, where she helped pass a “cop-free zone” resolution at the general assembly.

Today, at 43, López is Seattle Radical Women (RW) president. She has been key to building RW’s Sisters Organize for Survival campaign, which has fought state budget cuts and layoffs of public workers for the past three years. Radical Women is affiliated with FSP on the basis of a shared socialist feminist program.

López battles for reproductive rights as a passionate feminist of color and led RW’s collaboration with Black feminists in Jackson, Miss., to defend the last abortion clinic in the state. She has pinpointed the special impact of war on women and children and the need for the anti-war movement to prioritize this issue.

She is the author of the forthcoming RW position paper “Estamos en la Lucha: Immigrant Women Light the Fires of Resistance,” which focuses on the impact of U.S. immigration policies on women and children and highlights the central role of immigrant women in this country and internationally.

Her passion for racial justice helps her guide the National Comrades of Color Caucus, a joint caucus of the FSP and RW.

As candidate for vice president, López will be a fierce partisan of the downtrodden.

Press release:

Freedom Socialist Party launches presidential write-in campaign centered on bold working-class solutions

This election year, the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) is running New Yorker Stephen Durham for U.S. president and Seattleite Christina López for vice president in an energetic national write-in campaign.
Says Durham, 64, “The FSP ticket is a chance for people to vote not only against something, but for something. The campaign is thrilled to be giving people a way to send a strong protest message, find new kindred souls, and strengthen our organizing together for the future we want.”

Over the past three years, charges Durham, “The Democratic and Republican parties have done nothing but cooperate in forcing workers and the poor to pay the costs of the Great Recession caused by the banks and Wall Street. President Obama may play to the crowd by criticizing the ‘bad apple’ corporations, as he did in his State of the Union address. But the facts show that the program of corporate coddling, which creates austerity for the masses, is completely bipartisan.”

Vice presidential candidate López, 43, explains the campaign’s goals: “We are encouraging people to register a protest against both the unjust economic system and the rigged electoral process that keeps it in place. And we want to generate discussion and action around solutions for people’s immediate survival and for changing the system for good. We know it can be done! But it means creating a grass-roots, multiracial move- ment – one that prioritizes the issues of people who are hurting most, for example immigrants, single mothers and their children, and Black teens trying to enter a dismal job market. We have great momentum from last year’s spirit of rebellion to build on.”

The FSP campaign platform calls for taxing corporate wealth, ending all U.S. military involvement abroad, and creating full employment through a massive public jobs program and reducing the standard workweek to 30 hours with no cut in pay. The campaign also stands for bringing back and expanding social services, restoring civil liberties, and a host of other measures designed to eliminate poverty and discrimination and raise workers’ standard of living.

Durham and López are respected activists with a wealth of experience gained fighting for reforms like these while popularizing socialist ideas and the need for radical change. Durham, organizer of FSP’s New York City branch based in Harlem, is a gay rights pioneer with a strong union back- ground. A student and analyst of international affairs, he has traveled extensively in Latin America. López is an immigrant rights champion and the organizer for Seattle Radical Women. As organizer, she has helped lead a feminist campaign of women and men against budget cuts in Washington state for the last three years.

According to campaign manager Doug Barnes, the socialist feminist FSP is taking the unconventional route of a write-in campaign because corporate funding of the two major parties and restrictive ballot access laws stack the deck against minor parties so severely. These hurdles, he notes, are compounded by mainstream media dismissal of alternative candidates, resulting in presidential debates that almost entirely avoid topics like the social costs of war or increasing repression against political dissenters.

In one state, California, where the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) electoral alliance already has ballot status, Durham will compete to be PFP’s presidential candidate.

The Durham/López campaign launches this week with a candidate Web video, position statements, Facebook at www.facebook.com/VoteSocialism2012, Twitter @VoteSocialism, and featured articles in the Freedom Socialist newspaper. With the help of volunteers, the FSP will be spreading the news and ideas of the campaign widely. The Freedom Socialist 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee is planning for college and other speaking engagements, Skype presentations, fundraisers, and more activities around the country.

Freedom Socialist 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee
4710 University Way NE, Ste. 100
Seattle, WA 98105
206-985-4621
VoteSocialism@gmail.com

Independent Political Report

President Barack Obama and his administration are socialist – plain and simple.

Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun appears to have Tweeted this in response to President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night: “Mr. President, you don’t believe in the Constitution. You believe in socialism.”

The comment has already been retweeted by dozens of people with some comparing it to Joe Wilson’s infamous “You Lie!” outburst during a speech by the president in 2009 – though of course this apparent comment was confined to the internet.

Democratic Party News – The News of the Democratic Party.

Read the full thing at Socialist Webzine:

Supporters of the Dan La Botz, Socialist for Senate campaign of 2010 met in Columbus, Ohio over the weekend to found a new organization and launch a campaign to fight for jobs and public services in Ohio— they also pledged to resist the policies of Republic Governor-elect John Kasich. Dan La Botz was the Socialist Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio in November 2010 and received 25,000 votes.

The 23 labor and movement activists from cities throughout Ohio created the Buckeye Socialist Network (there will soon be a BuckeyeSocialist.org website). The Network’s first campaign is called DEFEND OHIO and will focus on defending public employees’ jobs and public services.

“Governor Kasich has unleashed a class war in Ohio,” said Dan La Botz. “And we intend to fight back. Kasich’s inauguration is the ideal occasion for Ohio’s working people to protest in at the Capital in Columbus and to show the governor that he is going to face four years of fierce resistance by unions and social movements.”

Independent Political Report

(excerpt from) World Socialist Web Site
Thanksgiving in America
US corporations shatter profit records
25 November 2010

US corporations took in .659 trillion in the third quarter, breaking records going back 60 years, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. It was the seventh consecutive quarter of profit growth at “some of the fastest rates in history” according to the New York Times.

If any more proof were needed, the third quarter profit record exposes the lie promoted by Democrats and Republicans alike that only the “free market” and private businesses can reverse the nation’s 9.6 percent unemployment rate. The corporations and banks are sitting on a cash horde in the trillions of dollars. This money is not being used to hire workers, but to line the pockets of the executives and top shareholders…

The holiday season finds the lame duck 111th Congress putting the finishing touches on two years of wealth redistribution to the rich. It is almost certain to extend Bush-era income tax cuts for the richest Americans…

One result of these policies is that more people than ever, including those with jobs, are forced to turn to soup kitchens, even on a day when families traditionally gather for a holiday associated with the “bountiful harvest.” Charities across the country are reporting record demand for help on Thanksgiving—a holiday established at a national level by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to honor the material abundance of the Republic, even in the midst of the Civil War…

Independent Political Report

In the spirit of bipartisanship, I humbly offer this learning tool to help folks decide whether or not they really do want to vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats in the 2010 midterms.

1. If you want the American government to be feared by the American people — but laughed at by Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

2. If you want to agree with John Kerry that American voters are stupid and distracted and uninformed — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

3. If you moved your 7-million-dollar yacht to Rhode Island to avoid taxes — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

4. If you want a “dude” president — and not the shining city on a hill — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

5. If you want to pay through the nose in taxes until you are 70 so union thugs in purple shirts can retire in security at age 50 — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

6. If you like the fact that people who actually know the Constitution get laughed at by people who are ignorant of it — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

7. If you want the entire country to be like Detroit, Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, Chicago — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

8. If you fear the Chamber of Commerce more than you do the Ground Zero Mosque — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

9. If you think liberalism and socialism have done a good job of managing the incredibly beautiful and rich state of California, vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

10. If you want a government bureaucrat, who can no doubt access your voter registration records, to determine whether or not you get a hip replacement or a cancer treatment — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

11. If you want to pay six dollars a gallon for gas — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

12. If you want electricity bills to “necessarily skyrocket” — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

13. If you think America deserved what it got on 9-11 — and that we can handle another such attack — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

14. If you think that Club Gitmo, which was not even operational on 9-11, is why “they hate us” — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

15. If you think our economy will boom with government bureaucrats making twice what similar folks make in the private sector — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

16. If you think there’s nothing wrong with Jerry Brown admitting that the last time he ran for governor of California, he “had no plan” — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

17. If you think anything has changed about Jerry Brown and his plans — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

18. If you liked Richard Blumenthal’s answer in the Connecticut debate on “how to create a job” — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

19. Actually, if you can even decipher Blumenthal’s answer about creating a job — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

20. If you think Michelle Obama actually added value to the health care system with her no-show three-hundred-thousand-dollar job in Chicago — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

22. If you think civil rights means that all white Americans are by definition guilty and all African-Americans are by definition innocent, vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

23. If you are stupid enough to think that being against a Federal Department of Education is the same as being against education — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

24. If you want to vote the same way the dead are voting — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

25. If you want to vote the same way the felons are voting — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

26. If you like the fact that our military men and women are being disenfranchised — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

27. If you think Cuba is a success story — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

28. If you think that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crashing the housing market is an example of “unfettered capitalism” and a failure of the free market, then vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

29. If you think that smart businesspeople will sit around and let our government tax them out of existence before they move their operations overseas — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

30. If you think it helps you if your boss gets hit with a huge tax bill — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

31. If Chris Matthews gives you a tingle up your leg — instead of an upset stomach – then vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

32. If you think insurance companies can lower rates, pay for every small medical item — and every preexisting condition — and every illegal alien — and stay in business — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

33. If you agree with the French union protesters upset about having to delay retirement for two years to age 62 — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

34. If you think a rally sponsored by Arianna Huffington, the SEIU, and the DNC is a non-political rally — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

35. If you think electric cars are the answer because they don’t use energy — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

36. If you don’t want Nancy Pelosi to retire — vote for Progressive Socialist Democrats.

I hope this has helped any undecided voters. 

Written by: C. Edmund Wright

Democratic Party News – The News of the Democratic Party.

On Friday’s “Morning Joe” MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell made a startling admission: “I am a socialist.”

The statement from the regular host of “The Last Word” came as he was chiding contributor Glenn Greenwald from Salon.com for apparently being a liberal hiding behind the word “progressive.”

Lawrence O’Donnell, “I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals.

What is wrong with our country? What happened to when these people were considered enemies of the country? Now they can get on TV and proudly say that they stand for everything that America is not? This needs to stop!! This far outreaches what our “tolerance” should be! They are destroying our Republic by spouting “anti-Constitutional” ideas and trying to undermine our Constitution and destroy America?

Democratic Party News – The News of the Democratic Party.