the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 10, 2014
With big financial vultures in attendance in the courtroom, Judge Steven Rhodes made Detroit’s bankruptcy plan official. He approved the “grand bargain” constructed by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Detroit’s Emergency Financial Manager Kevyn Orr, and accepted by the city’s big financial creditors and the unions.
The deal in reality is more like grand larceny at the expense of Detroit public workers. The judge and the bosses’ media make it seem as though the plan will eliminate the city’s debt. In reality, it “eliminates” only seven billion dollars of the 18 billion dollars owed by the city. Of that seven billion, almost 80 per cent will come from the pockets of city workers, according to the Detroit Metro Times.
The near-elimination of retiree health care accounts for four billion dollars of the cuts. Retirees in the city’s “general” system–not from police and fire departments–used to pay 20 percent of their healthcare costs. Now they receive only a $125 per month stipend toward buying health care from the federal health care exchanges, which currently cost retirees $500 a month or more.
Retirees are being robbed in four different ways, with a 4.5 per cent reduction in their pensions; big reductions to their cost-of-living, or COLA increase; and a “claw back” of annuity benefits they had already been paid; in addition to the slashing of their health care. The cuts to city workers don’t apply just to current retirees–they include even deeper cuts to active and future employees as well.
Other than eliminating the city’s debt to public employees, the plan does anything but eliminate its remaining debts. It hands over to the city’s big financial “creditors” land and taxes, which are revenue-producing, such as the entire Joe Louis Arena property and toll receipts from the Detroit-Windsor (Canada) Tunnel.
These gifts are much like the casino revenues the city gave away in a previous scam carried out by the big banks. Those banks played a big part in creating the city’s current financial mess. These gifts will go on producing revenue for the banks. And those future revenues are ignored when the media repeats the lie that Wall Street creditors will get only 13 cents on the dollar for their debts.
Judge Rhodes cried crocodile tears when he admitted that this grand larceny “will cause real hardship, and, in some cases, it is severe.” He tacked on a blatant lie, saying it’s about “shared sacrifice that is necessary because the city is insolvent ....”
There is no “shared sacrifice.”
The city is insolvent because of the giveaways to the banks and the corporations! So stop giving to them.
Attacks on public employees will certainly not stop in Detroit. The judge as much as admitted it, calling Detroit’s bankruptcy scheme “an ideal model for future debt restructurings.”
He means it’s an ideal model for every city, state, and county in the country looking to dump its pension obligations. Detroit’s bankruptcy has drawn lots of interest from the financial media and other cities already thinking about cutting pensions. Now that the elections are over, other public institutions will hold the example of Detroit’s bankruptcy over employees’ heads as they demand big pension cuts.
The attack on Detroit retirees will roll through the public sector, just like the auto restructuring was used by all of private industry to reduce the wages and benefits for their workers, too.
The whole working class is under attack by both private profit-making interests and public officials. They have as their goal the lowering of the standard-of-living of all workers, in order to increase profits.
In such a situation, there is no answer to the attacks until the working class begins to act as a whole, until workers begin to fight and join their fights together.
Nov 10, 2014
About ten years ago, medical researchers came up with a vaccine that stopped Ebola 100 per cent in monkeys, even in monkeys already infected with Ebola. But this promising vaccine, called VSV, was never produced for human use!
The reason? The pharmaceutical industry did not consider such a vaccine profitable enough–because the victims of Ebola were poor people in rural Africa!
What’s even more outrageous is that the research for VSV had actually been funded publicly, and patented, by the Canadian government. But Canada turned the results over to private interests, as is common in the industry. And the private interests–Iowa-based NewLink Genetics–decided not to develop it for human beings.
Now, after years into a terrible Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the U.N. World Health Organization and the U.S. government say they will provide the money (and of course the big profits) demanded by the big pharmaceutical companies to start testing VSV and other vaccines on people. They say that a human vaccine might be available for widespread use–by May of next year.
The official Ebola death count in West Africa is already 5,000. The real figure is certainly much higher, since there are not nearly enough doctors and nurses, nor hospital beds, in the three countries where Ebola has spread, and where people are literally dying on the streets. By next May, tens of thousands more people will certainly have contracted Ebola and many will have died from it.
In all likelihood, many of these thousands of lives could have been saved if VSV and other vaccines had been developed when scientists first worked on them. But those decisions–whether to produce the vaccines or not–were made by a few executives, who were completely oblivious to anything but their company’s profit.
Even health care under this murderous scourge called capitalism is deadly.
Nov 10, 2014
The State of Michigan ended public assistance for 810 recipients in 2013 due to their winning at least $1,000 in the Michigan Lottery. The state says it “saved” taxpayers two million dollars.
If they cared to, state officials could save taxpayers 261.5 million dollars by NOT funding a hockey arena for the billionaire Illitchs.
The state doesn’t call THAT welfare, but it is! Corporate welfare from a bankrupt city!
Nov 10, 2014
The fight against the Ebola virus requires meticulous and complicated sanitation precautions. Any organization intent on stopping the spread of Ebola would want experienced workers to be their front line defense.
So what is the Detroit Medical Center (DMC) doing?
They plan to lay off housekeepers, some with over 30 years of experience! Over 500 DMC workers–with irreplaceable collective knowledge about cleaning and infection control–would be thrown out.
The for-profit owners of the DMC–Tenet Healthcare–are planning to outsource janitorial services–to a for-profit company, Sodexo. The planned start date is December 1, 2014.
Sodexo already handles janitorial services at Detroit Public Schools. Employees there say Sodexo shorts schools on cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and paper towels. THIS is the company to be put in charge of sanitation in a hospital system serving Detroit, much of Michigan, and drawing patients from around the world!?
Under the DMC’s plan, laid off workers will be “allowed” to re-apply for their old jobs. Sodexo won’t say what the new wages and benefits will be, so the assumption is unspeakable cuts.
Proposed cuts to pay and benefits will increase the safety of corporate profits at Sodexo and Tenet. But ripping apart a skilled workforce and turning housekeeping into a revolving-door-job, would endanger public health under normal circumstances and certainly in the face of serious epidemics like Ebola.
Nov 10, 2014
The Detroit Medical Center announced it plans to lay off 565 custodians and outsource their jobs. A DMC spokesperson “assures” us that the move will only result in cleaner facilities, happier employees, and more satisfied patients.
What hogwash! This is a union-busting move aimed at decreasing workers’ wages and benefits. We’ve all seen what companies like this do. They may offer current employees their jobs back, if their bosses like them, and they’re willing to work for less. That doesn’t result in “more engaged” employees. Hiring less experienced workers will mean less sanitary conditions, not more; and more people made sick from unclean conditions.
Every layoff like this makes our jobs less safe. The DMC workers deserve our support.
Janitorial workers rallied in support of Justice for Janitors at the New Center Building on Grand Boulevard the same day DMC custodians held protests on Woodward Ave. Custodial workers have been rallying against DMC’s plans to lay off 565 workers and outsource their jobs.
Chants like “G-O-T-T-O-G-O, outsourcing has got to go!” and “Stand Up, Fight Back” show that these workers are taking on a fight that all workers have an interest to join in.
Nov 10, 2014
Pennsylvania just passed a law that seeks to silence Mumia Abu-Jamal, and any other prisoners who attempt to speak out.
Governor Tom Corbett signed the “Revictimization Relief Act” into law on October 21.
This law allows victims of crime to sue convicted prisoners for “causing further suffering”–by speaking or writing publicly at all. It was pushed through the state senate after Abu-Jamal gave a prerecorded commencement address at Goddard College in Vermont. It seeks to silence anyone in prison, and especially those wrongly imprisoned who want to draw attention to the injustice of their imprisonment–and especially imprisoned political prisoners, which the U.S. tries to pretend it doesn’t have!
Abu-Jamal, a political activist and former Black Panther, was convicted in 1982 on trumped-up charges of killing a police officer in Philadelphia. He spent many years on death row appealing his conviction, before a worldwide campaign forced the courts to commute his sentence to life in prison. He remains in prison to this day.
But while he’s been in prison, Abu-Jamal has been an outspoken and frequently published critic of the United States government, economy and justice system.
And now the government is trying to shut him–and others like him–up.
It’s no surprise–it’s what they’ve been trying to do all along!
Nov 10, 2014
In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, police have arrested Mr. Arnold Abbott and cited two ministers for the crime of feeding the homeless.
A new city ordinance limits where the poor can be fed; requires approval by property owners; and demands that outdoor toilets are provided with hand washing stations, and that distributed food is at regulated temperatures.
Ridiculous? Abbott was ordered by one police officer to “Drop that plate right now” as if, Abbott said, he were carrying a deadly weapon!
Abbott, at the age of 90, has ministered to the poor for 23 years. He was arrested for feeding 100 homeless people hot chicken stew, pasta, cheesy potatoes and fruit salad at a beachfront park.
When protests against his arrest started pouring in from around the country, officials rushed in to explain the “humanitarian” reasons for the new ordinances that prohibit feeding poor people outside.
The Chair of the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust “explained”, saying, “When you feed people out on the street, garbage gets dropped; that breeds rodents and creates a health and safety hazard for them and the general public,” adding “Feeding needs to be done indoors.” (As if he were speaking of zoo animals!)
The city mayor has said that he feels that feeding people on the street creates a cycle of dependency. As if he isn’t dependent on the wealthy he serves!
But the president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau let the cat out of the bag when she said, “It is not pleasant getting e-mails from people saying we’re not coming to your city because you have no heart.”
The whole uproar, of course, is about money from tourism. The City Commission passed this ordinance to drive the homeless out of Fort Lauderdale so that tourists would not be “bothered” by the sight of poverty. But their plan was exposed.
Good for Abbott and all those who have exposed the monstrous politicians and their wealthy patrons for what they really are!
Nov 10, 2014
This article is from the October 10th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The great powers talk of the violence of the so-called “Islamic State” ISIS, to justify new wars they are leading in the Middle East. But in the past 25 years they have put forth other pretexts to justify two other wars against Iraq, in 1991 and in 2003, paid for with the dramatic impoverishment of the country and the building up of reactionary militias.
In just four days in February of 1991, imperialist bombing crushed Iraq, leading to a slaughter of the Iraqi army and of its civilian population: between 150,000 and 200,000 dead out of a population of 17 million. The coalition of 37 countries led by the United States, France and Saudi Arabia lost perhaps 100 troops. This was the price paid by Iraq for going into Kuwait, a little oil monarchy it had occupied for six months! Imperialism had not led a coalition of such breadth since the difficulties created by the Viet Nam war.
“Desert Storm,” as they called their 1991 plan, marked a reversal of the previous support given by the U.S. to the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, whose attacks weakened its neighbor, Iran. The Irani regime of ayatollahs had refused to remain under U.S. control. Iraq had fought a war against Iran from 1980 to 1988 with the assistance of imperialism, especially arms from the U.S. and France. But the war left thousands dead and Iraq’s economy weakened.
Saddam Hussein thought he could collect on the service he had rendered the imperialists by annexing the oil fields of Kuwait. But his imperialist masters opposed this gesture, as it gave the appearance to everyone in the Middle East that it was possible to go against the Western oil companies, even sticking a knife into the policies decided by the imperialists.
So the West called Hussein “a new Hitler.” However, the U.S. had no intention of overthrowing Hussein in this 1991 invasion, because his regime was useful for controlling a very diverse population that was constantly in conflict, with Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south.
During the 10 years following, Iraq faced the consequences of a strict embargo as it was trying to rebuild itself. The water system, the power system, the health system, the delivery of food, all were so deeply impacted that Iraq suffered the death of half a million children.
Even when Iraq was allowed to recover a little bit of food in exchange for oil, their standard of living did not reach survival levels—especially since the U.N. deducted a commission from Iraq for “management expenses and war reparations,” amounting to 30% of Iraq’s oil exports.
But imperialism did not relax its grip on Iraq; in fact it prepared a new attack. The mood created by the attacks of September 11, 2001 allowed the U.S. to obtain the support of a part of its population. However, the attackers of September 11 had no connection with the Iraqi regime. So George Bush’s administration invented stories of “weapons of mass destruction” and al-Qaida commandos in Iraq. These accusations were simply the justification for launching another war against Iraq, on March 20, 2003, under pressure from the oil companies that wanted to get their greedy hands on Iraqi oil reserves.
One month later, Saddam Hussein’s regime was overturned. The U.S. official, Paul Bremer, was sent in to disband the Iraqi army and reorganize it. Militias based on religious groupings took the place of Iraq’s army. Among these were the Sunnis, who called for an Islamic state. The government put in place by the U.S. was based on religious divisions, and was predominantly Shiite Muslim.
During the eight following years of U.S. occupation, the new government did not succeed in imposing itself on Iraq, despite the use of repression, as in the Fallujah battle in 2004 in which U.S. troops massacred Sunni rebels. The general collapse of the Iraqi state was a favorable situation for the fundamentalist militias, whether Sunni or Shiite, to recruit young people driven to despair.
The horrors inflicted on hostages held by al-Qaida or ISIS militias are a reflection of the horrors inflicted on the Iraqi population—trying to survive, thousands in refugee camps, after two hideous wars led against them by the imperialist forces.
The third war beginning now, with troops from the U.S. and France, adds even more horrors to what they have already suffered in the previous interventions.
Nov 10, 2014
President Obama announced on November 7 that 1500 more U.S. troops would join the 1500 already there. Supposedly they will be training the Iraqi army in their latest combat against the militants of ISIS, the Islamic state.
Of course, during eight years of U.S. occupation just ended in Iraq, the U.S. government claimed it was training the Iraqi army.
And, of course, every war since the end of World War II, has seen the imperialist governments proclaim they were sending in their troops to “assist” the national government of this country or that one.
Up to now it has meant almost endless war falling heavily on the populations of the countries that are not imperialist. These countries are made all the poorer by the policies of the richer countries’ governments.
Nov 10, 2014
50 years ago, in the presidential election of 1964, Lyndon Johnson campaigned for the presidency by calling his opponent, Barry Goldwater, a warmonger. And he promised that his administration would not gsend American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.h Based on his promise not to go to war in Viet Nam, he won the election by a huge margin.
Having won, Johnson began almost immediately to order the bombing of North Viet Nam, and to send troops, arms and money to carry out an ever widening war on the Vietnamese people.
In fact, Johnson and the whole state apparatus had intended to go into that war before the elections. The proof is that, under a pretext, he got the tacit approval of Congress for that war in the summer before the election.
In August, the U.S. warship Maddox sailed into the Gulf of Tonkin, close to the capital of North Viet Nam, provoking an incident. The U.S. news reported that the Maddox had been fired upon. The U.S. used it as a justification to pass a resolution to allow the president to conduct whatever actions he saw fit in Viet Nam, without ever calling it a war. The U.S. could pretend it was never gofficiallyh at war.
But the Vietnamese paid an enormous cost as the U.S. war tore that country apart for the next nine years.
The U.S. government would spend the equivalent of 900 billion dollars, drop 6,727,000 tons of bombs (twice as many as were dropped during World War II), and spray 19 million gallons of poisonous chemicals over Viet Nam. The U.S. casualties numbered 58,200 soldiers dead, 304,000 wounded, 23,000 completely disabled, and a minimum of 70,000 suicides afterwards.
Even worse, Vietnamese casualties were estimated at more than three million, soldiers and civilians, not counting casualties afterwards from unexploded bombs and poisonous chemicals. The population of the country was some 35 million in the 1960s, meaning at least one tenth of the population in Viet Nam was killed by this war.
Lying presidents and going to war are hardly new. In the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson lied about World War I and Roosevelt lied about the reasons for World War II. In the 21st century, Bushfs cabinet spouted lies about gweapons of mass destructionh as the excuse to enter into war in Iraq.
Obama, who promised he would get the U.S. troops out of Iraq, is now taking the U.S. back into war in that country.
Lies are told by politicians, Democrat and Republican, to justify one war after another, carried out to allow U.S. corporations to profit from and control over whole areas of the world.
Nov 10, 2014
An October report by the World Journal of Food on the state of hunger in the world presents an overwhelming constant.
While undernourishment has been reduced in several countries, like China or Viet Nam, it grows in parts of Africa, showing up in increased levels of infant mortality.
This “invisible hunger,” which keeps advancing, is characterized by a shortage of vitamins and minerals in the diet. It leads to a higher incidence of infant and maternal mortality, weakening of the immune system and the central nervous systems, and the development of physical handicaps.
A recent U.N. meeting on food put an accent on the “explosion in the price of agricultural staples,” and the lack of institutions to control these prices. While in decline today, the prices of staples have faced a speculative wave in previous years. For the populations of poor countries, the price of these basic foods has surged. Prices have scarcely come down since.
Food shortages of this wave of “invisible hunger” cause between one and three million deaths of undernourished infants every year. These deaths are not tied to a lack of food resources on the level of the planet, but rather to the insanity of the capitalist market.
Nov 10, 2014
It was early 1951 in Baltimore, Maryland when Henrietta Lacks sought treatment at Johns Hopkins, a segregated hospital and the only one around that treated black patients. She said she had a painful “knot on my womb.” The diagnosis was cervical cancer. Before administering radium for the first time, the attending doctor cut two dime-sized samples of tissue, one cancerous and one healthy from Lacks’ cervix. This was not part of the treatment. No one asked permission from Henrietta or her family. No one informed her or her family that this procedure was even performed.
The doctor gave those samples to George Gey, a scientist who had been trying to establish a continuously reproducing, human cell line for use in cancer research. According to protocol, a lab assistant scribbled an abbreviation of Lacks’ name, “HeLa,” on the sample tubes.
HeLa succeeded where all other human samples had failed. Scientists around the world had been trying to cultivate human cells for years, but the cultures all eventually died out except for Henrietta’s extraordinarily malignant and aggressive cervical cancer cells. Gey gave away laboratory-grown HeLa cells to interested colleagues.
Scientists grew cells in mass quantities to test the new polio vaccine. Soon a commercial enterprise was growing batches for large-scale use. Discoveries piled up. HeLa led to the understanding that normal human cells have 46 chromosomes. NASA launched HeLa cells into orbit to test how human cells grow in micro-gravity. HeLa is the world’s most widely used cancer cell line, existing and reproducing in virtually every biological research lab in the world.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a biography of this virtually unknown mother of three who unwittingly left her cells to science. The author, Rebecca Skloot, with her curiosity peeked in a high school biology class, went on a mission to find out who this Henrietta Lacks was.
Born in 1920 in a small shack in Roanoke, Virginia, Henrietta grew-up working on the same tobacco fields that her father’s ancestors worked as slaves. She and her husband moved to Baltimore, Maryland during the boom brought on by WWII. Many black workers moved north, leaving the Jim Crow South behind to find work in what is known as the Great Migration. Her husband came to work for Bethlehem Steel mill on Sparrows Point like many thousands of workers did.
Sparrows Point quickly became the largest steel plant in the world, employing more than 50,000 workers at its peak. Streams of white workers poured into Dundalk, while black workers including the Lacks family moved to Turner Station located at the southern end of Dundalk.
Henrietta died in October of 1951 at the age of 31. The cancer spread and ravaged her body.
Although Hopkins never licensed or sold the HeLa cells, nor profited from their sale, entire companies and industries owe their foundation and fortunes to HeLa cells.
The Lacks family has never received a dime of compensation, nor, for a long time, any acknowledgment. The Lacks children were used for research purposes without their clear understanding of why Henrietta and her family were of such compelling scientific interest. Individuals at Hopkins committed egregious acts, such as giving confidential medical records to newspaper and magazine reporters.
The family was tormented by the thought that Henrietta was still alive in laboratories around the world, and being experimented on. If she was so important to medicine and the basis for huge fortunes, why does the family still live in poverty and without health insurance?
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is also a history of black people and Baltimore, and a history of racism in medicine. In this book we get a window into a family, a community and a time period that we otherwise would not have.
Nov 10, 2014
Working nurses in Michigan have asked more than once to meet with Governor Snyder to discuss safety plans for Ebola and to volunteer to help prepare.
Snyder refuses to meet, saying his Community Health Director and Chief Medical Executive have protection for health care workers under control.
But an online survey of Michigan nurses revealed many have heard NOTHING from their employer about Ebola preparedness!
Oblivious, the governor gave a speech right before the elections, saying hospitals across Michigan are ready to respond to Ebola, with almost 1,000 isolation beds available if needed.
He seemed not to understand that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention classifies Ebola as a Level 4 biosafety hazard and Michigan has no such treatment facilities!
Nurses in Michigan and all across the country are speaking up–countering the lie that healthcare workers are properly trained and that the right protective equipment is at-the-ready.
Since nurses’ help is not wanted, let Snyder’s “experts” provide hands-on care to the first Michigan Ebola patient. They can use whatever protective equipment is on hand and put their “preparedness” to the test!
Nov 10, 2014
“The people have spoken”–that’s what the politicians often say after an election.
And the “people” did speak in this year’s election–but most did it by NOT voting. Over 61% of voting-eligible people did not vote. Early estimates make this the highest percentage of no-shows at the polls since 1942.
Among workers–white, black or Hispanic–the rate of abstention in 2014 was higher still.
The result was a big loss for Democrats this year.
In Chicago and Cook County, the Democratic party machine may have marshaled voters to the polls, but 80,000 fewer voted for the Democratic governor this year than in 2010. And the Republican Bruce Rauner won.
In Detroit, where workers had been attacked by both parties in this year of the bankruptcy, only 31% voted, despite a big push at the last minute to get more voters out in a failed attempt to turn out the Republican governor.
In Maryland, a traditionally Democratic state, a low turnout in working class and black Baltimore translated into a win for the new Republican governor.
Does that mean, as the unions were quick to say, that workers have to fear a new round of attacks coming from the Republicans?
It’s certain there will be new attacks. And Republicans firmly in control, will now lead the charge.
But, need we say it, the reason so many people who usually vote Democratic didn’t vote was that they were fed up with what the Democrats had been doing while they were in office.
In Illinois, where the Democrats controlled both houses of the state legislature, as well as the governor’s mansion, they spent the last three months attacking the pensions of public sector workers. They gave hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to the richest companies, while keeping the taxes on ordinary workers high, and increasing the take from fees, fines and charges. They talked about raising the minimum wage–but did nothing to carry that out, despite their total control over Illinois state government.
The fact is, both parties, when in control of the government, have led the charge on the working class.
Workers have lost nothing in this election. By not voting they refused to give their seal of approval to either one of their enemies, Democrat or Republican. To the extent that not voting was a conscious choice, workers who made it showed neither party represents their own class interests.
The fact is, nothing will change for working people, until there is a massive move away from these two parties, until the working class itself begins to move to stamp its image on the society–and that means, of course, building their own party. But it also means by fighting as a class, pushing to have the needs of the ordinary population be met.
Nov 10, 2014
In most states, the 2014 elections offered working people no one to vote for, no one who represented their class interests. But in Michigan, there were five candidates running together on a slate calling “for a working class fight based on a working class policy.”
They did much better than independent candidates ordinarily are able to do. Gary Walkowicz, running in Michigan’s 12th Congressional district, had 5,039 votes, 2.44% of those voting. (It was 3.03% in the part of his district in Wayne County and 1.48% in the part in Washtenaw County.)
Sam Johnson whose district includes the central part of Detroit, had 3,466 votes, which translated into 2.07% of the 13th district, where turnout was lower.
In the election for the Dearborn School Board (responsible also for Henry Ford College), Mary Anne Hering had 5,153 votes, over 20% of the 25,127 people who voted. In an election to put three people on the new board, she came in fourth. Kenneth Jannot had 2,431 votes, almost 10%. (The final percentages are calculated differently because people could choose up to three candidates and so that increased the total number of votes counted.)
Finally, in the election for Wayne County Community College Board of Trustees, D. A. Roehrig won with 15,661 votes. He was unopposed after the incumbent failed to qualify for the ballot.
The importance of a campaign like this is not measured in the way the two parties measure their campaigns–who won and who lost. Two per cent of the vote may not seem like much, measured on their scale. But when measured against the difficulties for a campaign like this to be heard, even two percent in a large Congressional district is a very big number. And the three candidates running in local school board elections did even better.
Election law makes it hard for independent candidates to get on the ballot. The two parties have millions of dollars to spend on every election. And the big media don’t bother reporting on independent candidates.
Despite all this, the workers’ viewpoint was heard this year in Michigan. Volunteers supporting their election talked to people on street corners, in front of markets, at plant gates, at bus stops, in people’s homes, at meetings, at parties, always spreading the message of the campaign.
Thousands of workers responded–not only by voting, but by talking about this campaign to people around them.
Nothing was decided in this election. For workers to defend themselves, they will have to fight. And certainly there has been no fight like the kind we need. But those thousands attracted to this campaign can be the kernel of the fight that needs to be made. And that is important for the future.
In any case, all five candidates say that they will be out there tomorrow, just as they were during the campaign, calling for a working class fight based on a working class policy.