- The police pepper spraying of the marchers in N. Carolina who were marching to support Black Lives Matter…
- The Trump vigilante car caravan interference with the Biden campaign bus in Texas…
- Trump’s response to this: “I love Texas”…
- This tends to confirm the more serious worries about what may happen on election day and after…
- It also confirms the very worst fears about what will happen if Trump steals the elections and gets back into office…
- The only way to assure this won’t happen is a mass, working class campaign to stop him.
- Such a campaign can only be successfully built if the unions are directly involved in a way that the leadership has prevented up until now.
- That is why we should encourage and help the rank and file of the unions to organize opposition caucuses and fight for power inside he unions.
- That should be the focus of socialists, not opposition to voting for the “lesser evil”.
Categories: 2020 elections, Trump, United States
Hi,John. I personally don’t believe in voting for the lesser evil in POTUS elections. I’ve voted once for a duopoly candidate for president (Obama 08). I voted for the SWP candidate once (James Mac Warren )to the independent right once (Perot) a social democrat twice (Nader) and Jill Stein twice. I believe in independent politics. I voted for Hawkins/Walker. I like them. I like the local Green Party to an extent. The national party is trash or should be trashed.
I don’t think they will break 1%. I also think the Green Party is done after this cycle. I would love to band with like-minded folks and form an all new Progressive Party and discuss the formation of an all Black party right beside it(was only 6 or 7 when NBIP happened).I think all options should be on the table. I don’t think the unions out side of a few locals and Unite Here are worth the time. Most employees are not unionised and most never will be with the Right to Work laws on the books. New ways of organizing and new organizations are needed.
I will not vote shame folks for voting for Biden, the way I am shamed for voting third party. Your vote, your choice. I live in New Jersey so my third party vote is meaningless in the stream of things when the state generally votes blue for federal offices. My wife – a Yang Gang Republican and brown skinned Hispanic (Dominican) voted Biden.
I consider myself ideologically to be a Green Libertarian Ecosocialist. Seeing cities as self-sustaining ecosystems. Associations of mutual aid being the born. Arguing that smaller is better and taking into account human scale (including reconstituted states around large urban centers and creating 60-70 of these city-states or city-dominated states and breaking up the economy into smaller manageable/easier to coordinate pieces, and having people’s assemblies, community-rights superseding those of the state,etc) is where my thinking is currently.
I do recognize the incipient fascist movement fomenting around the country, but I do not see Trump as an anomaly. It was Reagan that called Black women welfare queens and called delegation from an African country monkeys. It was Ike that called southern segregationist good people that didn’t want they’re white daughters sitting next to ovwrgrown Negroes.
Trump is an opportunist. If he has to turn hard left to gain advantage he would. If he has to go hard right to do so he would. He seems to be more George Wallace than Louis Bonaparte. I want Trump gone as much as anyone. My fear is that he will lose and people will be blind when it comes to the Biden’s administration regime change activities, further deportations (His boss was Deporter in Chief) and as police violence continues unabated (Freddie Gay, Louis Castille, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Mike Brown happened before 2016).
What do you think leftists, socialists, Marxists, and Anarchists that vote Biden can do to keep their votes from becoming a capitulation to there’s no alternative to capitalism/white flag surrendering to the system? How does voting Dem help independent left politics? How do we build movements independent of operatives that will direct efforts back into the Democratic Party? How do we make a revolution in 2021?
Just a few questions and thoughts.
In Solidarity Always,
Jim Brash
thanks for your comments, Jim Brash. I don’t think we should discount the unions. They have over 14 million members, which dwarfs any socialist organization or group of organizations. Not only that, but there is a higher percentage of people of color in the unions than in the working class as a whole. When we think of the unions, we often tend to think of the building trades and that type, but don’t forget that there are hundreds of thousands of hotel workers, postal workers and city workers in unions. Millions, in fact. Then there are the auto workers, which have a very high percentage of black members. I emphasize the demographics of the unions because I do believe that the black working class will play the key role in building any sort of working class opposition to Trump and Trumpism. And where else are black workers concentrated, in what other organization are they concentrated as workers, other than in the unions?
The problem, as I have written over and over, is the conservative and cowardly bureaucracy that has its fingers around the throat of the unions. Up until now, it has been very difficult – nearly impossible – to build any sort of organized, rank and file opposition to this bureaucracy. I’m hoping that the crisis in society will shake up enough union members that they are open to the idea that, no, they cannot just sit back any longer. They have to organize to make their unions fight for them and for all workers. So I think that’s where we should concentrate our efforts – in encouraging that development.
The unions have hitched their horses to the Dems cart for decades to the detriment of the rank and file. Neoliberalism is a bipartisan assault on workers. In my UFCW local here in New Jersey, there are just as many GOPers among the rank n file as Dems. They get upset every year when the union supports Dems with their dues dollars. I get irate as well. When I ran for office under the Green banner, I couldn’t get support from the union, after being a member for more than 12 years at the time. We haven’t had an union election since 2001, after which the rules were changed to make it harder for folks not supported by the executive board and current leadership to run.
On my job, the current shop steward was appointed and when several reached out to the union hierarchy about having an election, we were given the runaround. Most lf the people when asked would get rid of the union and take their chances with the company on their own. When you speak to other union members of other unions, you generally get the same response. I see people abandoning unions before they take them over and transform them. I think it would take a massive struggle or mobilization of some sort to revitalize the unions otherwise we will continue to see union membership shrink and Right to Work laws expand to other states.
A Trump victory – stolen or otherwise – might be the straw that breaks the camels back and get organized labor to start actually fighting again. Its been in retreat since 1980, it might finally stand its ground if Trumpism continues. Sadly, a Biden victory won’t invigorate organized labor unless he does something foolish to piss the leadership off, which is highly unlikely.
Thank you for these comments. They are typical of the situation within all the unions. It is also telling that many members would rather get rid of the union altogether than get involved in fighting to change the unions. You write: “it would take a massive struggle or mobilization of some sort to revitalize the unions.” I agree with you completely. And I think you agree that only an aroused, conscious and organized rank and file can do that. It seems to me that some real shake-up in society as a whole is required to get that going. Hopefully, there will be a struggle of that scale around Trumpism which will accomplish that transformation of the consciousness within at least a significant layer of the unions.
I sure would like to know– if voting for Biden can stop “Trumpism,” or is even part of a strategy to stop Trumpism, do you think it was a mistake to note vote for Clinton in 2016?
Please see the comments and replies below this article: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2020/10/31/why-i-voted-for-the-lesser-evil-aka-joe-biden-this-time/