Socialist Youth <Socialist-Youth>

"Visit our site: www.SocialistYouth.wordpress.com"

Page 1 of 2  1  2  Next >>> 
FORUM FOR YOUNG PEOPLE189 days ago
 
Joe Higgins, Socialist Party candidate for Europe hosts a discussion on

"THE EURO ELECTIONS '09 & THE ECONOMIC CRISIS"

Saturday 30th May @ 3pm
Central Hotel, Exchequer St (off George's St), Dublin 2
 0 Comments 
Lisbon Beaten!528 days ago
 
Lisbon Treaty ‘No’ vote delivers major shock for political and big business Establishment

Privatisation and workers’ rights key issues of debate in referendum campaign
Kevin McLoughlin, Socialist Party (CWI Ireland), Dublin

In a higher than normal turnout for a referendum, 53.1%, the Lisbon Treaty (the renamed EU Constitution) was clearly rejected in Ireland, last Thursday, by 53.4% to 46.6%. As the No side trailed in every opinion poll, until a poll last week, this is a major shock for the political and business establishment in Ireland.

The government, with its new Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen, most of the parliamentary opposition, including Labour, the bosses' and farmers organisations, most of the leadership of the trade union movement, the churches, the media and every other part of the establishment, all combined and used their vast resources to call for a Yes vote. They are clearly stunned by the poll defeat.

This is also an important setback for the big business interests and the political elite who control the EU. "With all respect for the Irish vote, we cannot allow the huge majority of Europe to be duped by a minority of a minority of a minority", commented Axel Schafer, social democrat (SPD) leader on the Bundestag committee on EU affairs. Some commentators claim that Ireland, a country with less than 1% of the EU population, cannot be allowed to “hold up” the whole of Europe. But the reality is if the EU was democratic, the Lisbon Treaty would have been put to the vote in all EU countries, and on the basis of the No vote in Ireland and the previous No votes to the EU Constitution, it would be rejected by working class people in many countries. The real minority dominating the lives of Europe millions is the tiny ruling classes.

The Socialist Party (CWI in Ireland) was an important part of the No campaign. We combined our own independent activities with participation a the broader, loose campaign - the Campaign Against the EU Constitution (CAEUC), which involved thirteen other parties and groups and activists putting forward a progressive and left position. Sinn Fein, the only party with parliamentary representatives that opposed the Treaty, were prominent particularly in the media, but their central demand, that the Treaty could and should be renegotiated, was weak and, in part, perhaps a preparation for possibly supporting such treaties when they enter a future government.
Critical role of Joe Higgins

It is not an exaggeration to say that Socialist Party representative, Joe Higgins, played an absolutely critical role in the course of the campaign. Joe was the most capable representative of the No side; taking on and exposing the arguments of the senior political and business representatives of the Establishment. This is generally recognised. In yesterday’s Evening Herald newspaper, media analyst and consultant, Terry Prone, cited her ten reasons why Lisbon was defeated and she listed Joe Higgins as one of the ten. "They failed to realise the impact mavericks like Joe Higgins have. Joe Higgins is an institution. He is more than a curiosity. People who haven't a left wing bone in their body identify with him because they find him straight and passionate and witty. If he said healthcare was going to be privatised, it rankled with them."

During the referendum campaign, the Yes side argued that Lisbon was mainly about ‘modernising’ the EU and changing the EU structures, so that a bigger EU could work more efficiently. They tried to diminish the important political, economic and military aspects contained in this long and practically unreadable Lisbon Treaty document.

While the Socialist Party dealt comprehensively with the militarism in the Treaty, we concentrated on how the Treaty facilitated the privatisation of vital public services, like health and education, and how the Treaty meant attacks on the wages, conditions and rights of workers.

The Treaty was purposely written, including protocols etc, to make it more difficult to pin down its neo-liberal and anti-working class content. It included a so-called Charter of Fundamental Rights, which added no new legal rights for workers but was used by the Labour and trade unions leaders as a justification for the campaign for a Yes vote.

Unlike the last Treaty, where the Establishment successfully said vote yes and played on the mantra “do not deny ten countries in eastern Europe the right to join the EU”, this time they could not manufacture strong arguments to frame their campaign around. The Yes vote campaigners wanted to avoid the actual details of the Lisbon Treaty and instead on the idea that Europe has been good for Ireland, which did not take account of the changing economic and social conditions working people in Ireland are experiencing.

Article 188c of the Treaty, by removing the ability of states to veto trade deals involving health and education, would open up the prospect that financial speculators, as a right, could intervene and cherrypick the most profitable aspects of health and education. These capitalist vultures would impose new charges and fundamentally undermining vital public services.

Lisbon continued with the policy of putting the right to trade and ‘do business’, in other word, putting the right to profit and exploit, at the centre of the EU, and above the rights of workers to decent pay and conditions. It further facilitated European Court of Justice to continue to make more vital rulings that favour big business over workers (e.g. the Laval and Ruffert judgements).
Privatisation and workers’ rights major points of contention

These issues of privatisation and workers’ rights were major points of contention throughout the campaign. The Socialist Party, through Joe Higgins’ interventions, helped to force these issues onto the agenda and also by our large posters on the issues, which were publicly seen in key cities. Two Socialist Party posters said: ‘No privatisation of health and education - No to Lisbon’ and ‘Defend workers wages and conditions - No to Lisbon’. In comparison to practically all the other posters, which had bland, meaningless slogans, ours made clear statements on the key issues and had a real impact. In a radio debate, Mary Harney, Minister of Health, bitterly complained that Joe Higgins and the Socialist Party had put up posters all over the country claiming that health was going to be privatised. An email sent to the Socialist Party from a female voter stated: "I have to say, I was really in 2 minds until I saw your poster. When I saw SF [Sinn Fein] were the only party advocating a NO vote, I was going to vote YES as I am not a SF fan but as a long time fan of yours, and all your opinions, your poster advocating a NO is what swayed my decision".

Day in and day out, the Yes side, including the leaders of Labour and the trade unions, bluntly accused the Socialist Party and the No side for “scaremongering” and they claimed that services and rights would actually be safeguarded by a Yes vote. In this context, it is very significant that the Treaty was explicitly rejected by the key sections of the working class.

During the campaign, the media facilitated the Yes side, by trying to undermine the arguments made against by the No campaign. For some people, it would have seemed the contest was reduced to a stalemate, with every claim being counter-claimed by the Yes and No campaigns. So an important question that emerged is do you trust what the political and business establishment is saying about the Treaty? Clearly, the instincts of key sections of the working class showed they did not trust the elites!

After 15 years of economic boom in Ireland, and the lack of a political alternative and mass struggles by working people, people’s mood and confidence and attitudes were affected. However, the rejection of Lisbon was a definite statement by the working class. It was openly accepted by commentators that the referendum poll result showed that the working class had turned out to vote more than in middle class and more affluent areas, where the Treaty was generally.

There were some reactionary elements on the No side, such as ‘Libertas’, a front set up by neo-liberal Irish billionaire, Declan Ganley. Coir was an umbrella that brought together fringe religious elements and anti-abortion reactionaries. These groups were given undue prominence, particularly in the last week of the campaign, in an attempt to frighten people to vote yes. However, the issues these campaigns highlighted, the threat of higher rates of corporate taxation and abortion etc, did not get significant resonance during the campaign.
Media and government try to distort No win

In the aftermath of the vote, the media and the government will try to distort the reasons why people voted no. But, as one woman said in an email to the Socialist Party: "I am furious at our political representatives. I felt they dismissed and belittled the No campaign and the intelligence of the Irish voter. You, however, very articulately expressed my own views on Europe, globalisation, privatisation and the erosion of democracy, concerns I know are shared by many. Using abortion and conscription to explain the no vote is just a scapegoat for the government to take them off the hook, and as they do, this affirms the fact that they are removed from the reality of life for the majority of Irish workers."

What happens now? This vote does not mean that The Lisbon Treaty is gone. The truth is probably that the EU establishment does not know exactly what to do but are intent on moving on. For them, preparing the EU for an intensification of competition with the US and China, and the scramble for markets, resources and influence, is vital. If, following this vote, the ratification of the Treaty continues by the respective governments, it is likely they will try to find the way to proceed. They will possibly try to pressurise Ireland to vote again or threaten the Irish that they will be “left behind”!

While some of the opposition parties who supported the Treaty have said they would oppose a re-run of the poll, and clearly a re-run would pose serious dangers for the political establishment in Ireland, the Dublin government has, quite consciously, not ruled out that option.

What is clear is that the best follow-up to this victory would be an active response by working people, seeing people get active in the workplaces, the communities, the schools and universities, to build an opposition to capitalist neo-liberal policies. The Socialist Party will do all in its power to help build such campaigns and movements. Crucially, the vote exposes the gulf between working people and the Establishment, including the leaders of Labour and the trade unions. This poses the vital need for the building of a new mass party for working people.

The Socialist Party ran a vibrant No campaign, which included media coverage, mass postering, distributed tens of thousands of leaflets, running street stalls in many city centres, door to door canvassing, and holding a host of public meetings and debates. Our campaign made a definite mark and further developed the national profile of Socialist Party.

The debates with leading figures from the Yes campaign that we organized in Cork, Limerick and Dublin, were the biggest public debates on the issue in those cities and had an important impact. The turnouts were 170, 200 and 100 people, respectively.

The Socialist Party is holding follow-up public meetings, next week, in several cities and we are confident that new people will join us because of the role the Socialist Party played in this important victory and because of our clear socialist alternative to neo-liberal capitalism.
 2 Comments 
Agency Work = Legalised Exploitation588 days ago
 
Socialist Youth spoke to Susie and Tomas about their experiences working for agencies in Dublin.

Susie works for a temping agency called Angels working in administration and customer services.

“Working for a temping agency can be really insecure as some jobs last a week or two and others may only last a few days. I get paid between €10 and €11 an hour and I know I am paid less that the permanent staff. If I am sick I don’t get paid and of course I don’t get holiday pay.

“It causes me all sorts of problems being an agency worker. Even if I could afford to buy a house, I would never get a mortgage because I haven’t got a permanent job and it is a problem trying to get any type of credit. “I have been trying to get a permanent job but it is difficult, if you look on jobs.ie, the majority in this area of work are agency jobs.”

Tomas was employed by an agency to do customer care work for Eircom. “There is a huge difference between being an agency worker in Eircom and a permanent worker. Permanent staff get a pay rise ever year, have pensions, sick and holiday pay (more holidays) and are members of a union – the agency workers got none of that. I was the only agency worker who was a member of the union, but the agency refuses to recognise the union.

“When I worked in Vodafone for an agency I was getting paid €7,500 a year less that the permanent workers doing the same job as me. Companies are saving a fortune using agency workers, and they can also get rid of you anytime they want because agency workers have no rights.”
 0 Comments 
Does Obama Deserve Your Support? — Ten Things You Should Know612 days ago
 
Mar 20, 2008
Patrick Ayers

Barack Obama has tapped into the anger of millions of Americans who want real change. He often speaks eloquently against the Iraq War, inequality, and injustice while emphasizing hope and change.

But would an Obama presidency bring the change we need? Is he really cut from a different cloth than the rest of the corrupt, corporate-controlled politicians?

A deeper look reveals that Obama does not deserve the support of workers, progressives, or youth. Here are ten reasons why:

1. His biggest contributors are Wall Street banks and corporate law firms.
Seven of his top ten donors are some of the world’s biggest banks and financial institutions that are behind the sub-prime mortgage crisis and are now looking for big bailouts and corporate welfare from the federal government, while the rest of us are left with the bill (see www.opensecrets.org for a list of Obama’s donors).

2. He won’t end the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
While Obama says he would end the war in 2009, like Clinton he has been very careful to call only for the removal of combat troops from Iraq. His position might look good when compared to McCain’s statements about staying in Iraq for 100 years. In reality, Obama’s plan would also maintain tens of thousands of troops, special operations forces, and bases – as well as private mercenaries like Blackwater - in Iraq for years to come.

3. He promotes the expansion of the U.S. military.
Like Bush, Obama has called for increasing the size of the U.S. military by 92,000 troops. He calls for redeploying thousands of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to strengthen the U.S. occupation there.

As William Hartung writes, Obama has said “we will probably need to ‘bump up’ the military budget in a new administration” (Foreign Policy in Focus, 2/21/08) . At $614 billion (not counting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!), the proposed U.S. military budget for 2008 is already larger than the rest of the world’s military spending combined.

4. He has repeatedly voted to fund the war in Iraq.
While he spoke out against the war before entering the Senate, as a Senator Obama has voted for over $300 billion in funding to continue the war.

5. He supports the continuation of the for-profit healthcare system.
Michael Moore’s film Sicko has provided ample evidence to show the key problem with the U.S. healthcare system is that it is controlled by big, for-profit insurance companies and HMOs, yet Obama wants to leave power in their hands.

Moore points out that Obama is “now the second largest recipient of health industry payola after Hillary” and now takes “more money from the people committed to stopping universal healthcare than any of the Republican candidates” (michaelmoore.com, 1/4/08) .

6. He supports NAFTA and corporate free trade.
In the Ohio primaries, Obama decried how corporate free trade deals like NAFTA have hurt millions of working people. Yet within days, it came out that his top economic advisor was telling the Canadian government not to take it seriously – it was “more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans” (AP, 3/3/08) .

This hypocrisy is not new. As the Associated Press reported, “In his 2004 Senate campaign, [Obama] said the U.S. should pursue more deals such as NAFTA” (2/26/08) .

7. He voted to re-authorize the Patriot Act in 2005.
As Ralph Nader’s running mate Matt Gonzalez points out, this was “easily the worst attack on civil liberties in the last half-century. It allows for wholesale eavesdropping on American citizens under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts” (“The Obama Craze: Count Me Out,” beyondchron.com, 2/27/08) .

8. He voted for the 2006 bill to build a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexican border.
This racist, anti-immigrant, nationalistic bill will force immigrants to cross in even more dangerous areas. Around 500 immigrants die each year attempting to cross the border, a number that has soared since the early 1990s owing to the growing militarization of the border.

9. He supported Bill Clinton’s “welfare reform.”
This bill disproportionately hurt poor blacks and Latinos by cutting off guaranteed federal aid to families with dependent children. Poor single mothers were forced to look for jobs to qualify for aid under the guise of “personal responsibility.” But the government failed to take responsibility for providing them with decent, living-wage jobs, meaning many have sunk even deeper into poverty, stuck working minimum-wage jobs or forced out onto the streets.

10. He is not campaigning against the racist criminal injustice system.
While Obama calls for the elimination of sentencing disparities for crack and powder cocaine, he has spent very little political energy speaking out on this or other issues relating to the racist criminal injustice system.

In March 2007, Obama voted to reinstate $1.15 billion for the COPS program. This Clinton-era program put 100,000 more cops in the streets, leaving many inner cities feeling like occupied territory and contributing to the massive growth in the U.S. prison population, currently at 2.3 million, the highest in the world by far.
 9 Comments 
Resistance - A Day of Debate & Discussion for young people631 days ago
 
Socialist Youth in Dublin are organising their second Resistance event, a forum for young people to debate and discuss the struggle against capitalism and how we can create a socialist society. All are welcome to attend.


Dublin Details:
Where: Central Hotel, Exchequer St, Dublin 2 (Just off George's St)
When: Saturday, March 8th
Time: 12.30PM

12.30PM - 5 years after the invasion of Iraq - How can war and the armamments
profiteers be stopped?
Speakers: Joe Higgins, Socialist Youth & Carol Fox (Peace & Disarmament Activist)

3PM - Venezuela and Bolivia at the crossroads - Can capitalism be defeated?
Debate with Enda Duffy (Chair, Labour Youth) & Dave Convery (Socialist Youth - Just returned from a 6 month visit to Latin America)
 0 Comments 
Rage Against the Machine - Coming to Ireland638 days ago
 
Socialist rock band, Rage Against the Machine, are now planning on comin to Ireland this summer to play at the Oxegen festival.

Here is an article on their recent gig in Australia where over 40,000 young people turned out to see them:

On Monday January 28 the annual Big Day Out music festival was held at Melbourne’s Flemington Race Course. Organisers report that over 40,000 fans were drawn to the event, which was headlined by the most revolutionary rock band in the world - Rage Against the Machine.
By Kirk Leonard, Socialist Party Melbourne An electric enthusiasm ran through the crowd from the moment the gates opened. All around the race course snatches of conversation about ‘Rage’ could be heard throughout the day. Thousands of people turned up to the event wearing Rage Against the Machine t-shirts.

By the time Rage were about to walk onto the main stage late in the day, the audience was on the verge of eruption. People were attempting to climb speaker scaffolding and some climbed to the top of the bar tent roof, just to get a glimpse of the famous band.

As the curtain was pulled back, a massive back drop of a red star was revealed. The worker’s anthem of The Internationale, played in the background.

The crowd responded with a massive roar. As the band walked on stage, lead singer, Zack de la Rocha said ‘Hi, We’re Rage Against the Machine from Los Angeles’ and launched into Testify, a song about the capitalist controlled media’s grip on people’s knowledge and it’s distortion of what is really happening in the world.

Rage continued through several more crowd favorites such as Bulls on Parade, Renegades of Funk and Bombtrack all delivering various messages about resistance, poverty, war and hunger, and their relationship to the capitalist system. Renegades of Funk in particular has a strong underlying theme about the masses of poor, working and oppressed people being the ones who can actually change the world.

Despite the clear revolutionary messages and stance of these songs, and the huge enthusiasm of the crowd, the level of consciousness amongst many of those cheering lagged behind the meaning of the lyrics. Despite this, Rage’s influence is a very positive one, pushing people to the left and helping to highlight serious issues facing society.

Following these songs on the set list were, Bullet in your Head, Know Your Enemy, Tire Me and Guerilla Radio. These songs make many of the same points that socialists make about the ruling class controlling the flow of information through the media and attempting to influence the masses to be compliant with their system.

Next was Calm like a Bomb, a song that is inspired by the struggle of the Zapatista’s in Chiapas, Mexico. This song links this struggle to global capitalism and the many similar situations around the world. “Pick a point on the globe, Yes the pictures the same
Theres a bank, theres a church, a myth and a hearse. A mall and a loan, a child dead at birth” are lyrics from one of the verses that emphasize these points.

The rest of the songs played were Sleep now in The Fire, Wake Up, Freedom and Killing in the Name Of. Zack even stopped in an interlude of Wake Up to give a short explanation of how imperialism breeds war, saying that “the current wars are not products of corrupt politicians and bad decisions, but of the entire system”.

Another point made in beautiful poetic style by Zack in Sleep now in the Fire when he raps “For its the end of history, Its caged and frozen still, There is no other pill to take, So swallow the one, That made you ill”.

What Zack is saying here is that the capitalists would have us believe, that history has hit it’s end in the epoch of capitalism after progressing through many phases, from Slavery to Feudalism, and that based upon this we just have to put up with the capitalist system from here on end, as the ‘pill that made us ill’, because there is ‘no other pill’ (i.e. socialism).

Rage’s lyrics are fantastic and so is their music. This makes for an inspiring show which softens the political ground for socialists and all anti-capitalists to raise these issues amongst the thousands of young people who attended.

Many people are drawn to Rage Against The Machine by their themes of resistance and fighting back. This shows a mood that exists under the surface in society for change. The challenge for socialists is to shift the support for revolutionary music into support for building revolutionary organisations that will change the world for the better.
 2 Comments 
75 Years After Hitler Came to Power - NEVER AGAIN!674 days ago
 
NO TO RACISM & ATTACKS ON OUR DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS!

Rallies around the country

Dublin Details:

Where: Meet at the Spire, O’Connell St
When: January 30th
Time: 5.30PM

To mark the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Socialist Youth is organising a rally to highlight the vicious brutality of the Nazi regime in smashing and suppressing the trade union organisations, left-wing parties and ethnic, religious and sexual minorities in the 1930s and 1940s but also to address the issues of racism, sexism, homophobia and attacks on our democratic today as well as the threat of fascism in a number of countries. The rally will be addressed by a number of anti-fascism and anti-racism campaigners.

A public meeting will also be held after the rally to discuss how to further the struggle against discrimination, in all its forms. Details for the public meeting are to be confirmed.

Socialist Youth invites all anti-fascism, anti-racism and anti-discrimination campaigners and organisations to attend and to show that the menace of fascism has not been forgotten and that the struggle against it still continues.
 0 Comments 
Socialist analysis of the US Elections678 days ago
 
Voters demand change while two parties offer empty promises

The Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary kicked off the 2008 presidential elections, which are poised to dominate media attention for the next 11 months. The elections are occurring against the backdrop of widespread anger and disaffection in U.S. society, with Americans concerned about the looming economic recession, fed up with the ongoing quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, and enraged at seven years of right-wing policies under Bush. The results of the primaries so far show an electorate that is looking to shed the legacy of the Bush administration and strike a blow against the establishment of both parties.

By Dan DiMaggio, Socialist Alternative (CWI in the US), Jan 12th ‘08

SEE: http://socialistyouth.wordpress.com/...
 0 Comments 
POLAND: Miners Occupy their Workplace680 days ago
 
Urgent solidarity action needed!
Paul Newberry, GPR (Polish socialist group, in the CWI)

Five hundred coal miners are taking part in an occupation strike 1,000m underground in the Polish mine Budryk. This is the biggest underground strike in Polish history. The protest started in mid-December, but, at the beginning of January 2008, the miners decided to move their occupation of the mine underground.

The miners demand equal pay to the level of employees of Jastrzebska Coal Company, which has just taken over their mine. Although productivity in the Budryk mine is twice the industry average, they have the lowest wages in the mining industry.

However, the strike has provoked the class hatred of all the main political parties, which are united in their denunciations and attacks on the miners. All the Polish newspapers are attacking the miners’ strike, spreading lies and slanders, including the so-called “respectable” “democratic” newspapers, such as Adam Michnik’s Gazeta Wyborcza. Jaroslaw Zagorowski, president of the Jastrzebska Coal Company, compared the trade unions organising the strike in Budryk to plane hijackers and called the strike leaders “terrorists”.

Unfortunately, such attacks have not only come from the side of big business and its paid hirelings in the Polish parliament. Solidarnosc is playing a strikebreaking role in this dispute, something not untypical for this so-called ‘trade union’. Marek Szolc, leading trade unionist of Solidarnosc in the Budryk mine, and a prominent anti-globalist in ATTAC, scandalously called for the state to urgently intervene and use all means necessary to break the strike. Similarly, another mining union, ZZG, joined the bosses and are attacking the two unions, August 80 and Kadr, which are behind the strike.

The real terrorists are the coal mafia – the corrupt trade unionists and managers in the coal sector, who act as parasites on the industry and siphon off the profits of the mines to their own private companies. This is the real reason why trade unions such as Solidarnosc oppose the strike – their leaders have, long ago, gone over to the side of the bosses and abandoned any serious struggle to improve workers’ rights and conditions. The terror they introduced in the mines led directly to the deliberate falsification of the gas sensors in Halemba mine, just over a year ago, in which 23 miners were killed in a methane explosion.
Miners determined to win

However, the miners are determined to win and so are their families. Everyday wives and families of the striking miners picket outside the mine to show their support. Miners and their supporters, including the Group for a Workers’ Party (GPR) (the Polish CWI), are trying to build solidarity support for the strike. Over the last 2 years, miners from August 80 have travelled the length and breadth of the country supporting workers in struggle and defending women’s rights. The level of solidarity which they have displayed is unprecedented in recent Polish history. Now the miners of August 80 need the support of other workers. On 10 January, there will be a demonstration outside Budryk mine and pickets in a number of cities in Poland, including Warsaw.

GPR is calling for solidarity action with the miners of Budryk. Not only do we demand the wage rise which the miners rightly deserve, but we are also calling for an end to privatisation. We believe this strike and the experience of the Halemba tragedy has shown the desperate need for workers control and management of the industry.

We support the call of the Strike Committee for international solidarity and support for the strike. Payments can be made under the name "Support fund for families of striking miners of Budryk". The bank account is POLU PL PR PL 23 8454 1053 2001 0041 5426 0001. The name of the bank: Orzesko-Knurowski Bank, Spódzielczy Oddzia, Ornontowice, Poland.

Messages of support can be sent to the Polish cwi comrades at poldek@mdnet.pl
 0 Comments 
The Obama Mirage - Behind the rhetoric of "hope" and "change"682 days ago
 
Jan 11, 2008
By Theodros Shibabaw, OPEIU Local 12 (personal capacity), Minneapolis, MN
It seems like on the cusp of being real. For the first time in the U.S., a black man has a serious chance of being the next occupant of the White House. Barack Obama won the Democratic caucus in Iowa and finished a strong second to Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.

The centerpiece of his campaign has been the claim that he is the candidate of “hope” and “change” as opposed to the establishment figure Hillary Clinton. He has crowned himself the king of post-racial and post-partisan politics. With the assistance of the corporate media machine, he’s been allowed to capture the imagination and hope of millions of voters, particularly new layers of politicized young people.

This includes hope that he has a “realistic” plan to end the Iraq War, that he is not beholden to big business interests and that he’s the candidate of universal healthcare. Obama wants us to believe that he’ll lift up the working poor and save the middle class.

A corporate candidate
The truth behind the Obama phenomenon however is much less attractive than the image. If you actually look at his concrete policy statements, voting record and source of campaign funds, Obama is a trusted servant of the big business elite. He represents the U.S. ruling class’s desperate attempt to put a new face on its domestic and global domination.

Obama’s list of top campaign contributors reads like a Wall Street Who’s Who list, with Goldman Sachs at the top. How does he claim to not be taking money from lobbyists and PACs and still raise over $80 million? (opensecrets.org) The answer is the magic of bundling – elite individuals with a lot of influence get many senior and junior level executives to donate the maximum amounts ($2300 for both the primary and general elections). As of October 29, Obama had received 46% of his campaign money from mega-rich donors who had given $2300 or more.

It’s very convenient for “antiwar” Obama that he wasn’t in the Senate to vote for the Iraq war resolution in 2002. Based on a tepid speech he made in 2003 in which he attacked the war in Iraq as the “wrong war at the wrong time,” Obama claims he has opposed the war from the start. His record in the Senate should speak much louder. He has consistently voted to approve hundreds of billions of dollars for the war and refuses to commit to pulling all the troops out by the end of his first term, in 2013! Further, Obama supports a troop increase in Afghanistan and is fully committed to the so-called “War on Terrorism.” Obama supports an expansion of the military by 100,000 more troops and increasing the bloated Pentagon budget.

Obama’s claim to be the candidate of universal healthcare is no better. His plan, like Clinton’s, is only a reorganization of the current private healthcare system. This is less a guarantee for universal healthcare and more a huge scam to line the pockets of the private healthcare industry by forcing working people to buy insurance from them. As long as private profit isn’t taken out of all aspects of the healthcare industry through a single-payer system, talk of affordable and universal healthcare is no more than a mirage.

Post-racial politics?
Mr. Obama’s success as a mainstream candidate reflects his unspoken promise not to have a “race agenda.” Instead, he makes patently false statements about how “blacks have already come ‘90 percent of the way to equality,’ inferring that his election would provide the final ten percent” (Glen Ford, blackagendareport.com). In reality, people of color face huge inequities that belie Obama’s anesthetized proposition of a post-racial paradigm.

2005 Census data show that the median income for black households was $30,939 whereas in white households it was $50,622 (Washington Post, 11/14/06). Although only about 12% of the US population, the July 2007 Sentencing Project Report found that 900,000 of the nation’s 2.2 million prison population is black. Equally grotesque structural racism can be found in the criminal neglect of infrastructure, education and housing in the black community.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Obama attempted to tamp down the legitimate anger of Blacks in New Orleans, saying “The incompetence was color-blind.” He had to be poked and prodded to even bother responding to the clear racist double standards in the prosecution of the Jena 6 in Louisiana.

Nevertheless, Obama’s rhetoric about change didn’t come out of thin air. Most Americans want to ditch the eight-year burden of the extreme right wing, militarist presidency under George W. Bush along with his Democratic Party accomplices. Millions of working class people and youth are frustrated by their falling incomes, lack of healthcare and the unending military occupation in Iraq. Obama’s campaign strategists have skillfully tapped into this very real sentiment for change.

Workers, young people, and people of color should reject Obama and the Democratic Party. We have no need for a party of big business that pretends to fight for regular people. We don’t need any corporate politicians whose purpose is to confuse and derail our path to independent politics. What we need are principled independent antiwar, anti-corporate, pro-worker candidates to challenge the two parties of big business at all local and national levels of office.
 0 Comments 
Page 1 of 2  1  2  Next >>>