“I Stand for a Working Class Fight”

Jan 19, 2015

The following statement is taken from the web site www.workingclassfight.com by teacher Ed Hershey about his election campaign for City Alderman in the 25^th Ward of Chicago, Illinois.

I stand for the working class organizing itself to fight for its own class interests.

One alderman by himself cannot overcome the problems we face. We will begin to get what we need only if we organize to fight for it.

My opponent, Danny Solis, is a good example of the problem. He started off decades ago as a community organizer. But now he carries on business as usual—voting with Mayor Emanuel 97% of the time, including for the attacks on the schools. Danny Solis turned his back on the community when he accepted the bosses’ framework, their way of doing things.

We need a different framework, a working class framework.

I would use the resources of the alderman’s office to help working people organize.

• I would make public all the information I can get—where the corporations and politicians are spending the workers’ money, what plans are being made.
• I would open the alderman’s offices, make them available for people to meet and decide what they want to do, how they want to confront the attacks working people face.
• I would publicly support all struggles made by working people to defend themselves.
• I would fight alongside any workers mobilizing to fight who want me with them.

I know City Hall has attacked aldermen for doing much less. But the only alternative is to let City Hall carry on with business as usual.

We will never solve our problems by ourselves in this ward. But if people in this ward make a fight, it could pull other people after us—working people in the rest of Chicago and beyond.

We all know that voting, by itself, doesn’t change anything.

But a vote for me in this election could count.

It would be a statement that other working people could hear. A large vote would be a statement that there is a part of the working class who have had enough with business as usual, people who are saying with their vote that a fight is necessary.