Category: Green Party
US Green Party Says it’s Unwise for Biden to Ignore Putin’s Invitation to Talk
worker | March 19, 2021 | 7:01 pm | Green Party, Joe Biden, Russia | Comments closed

https://sputniknews.com/world/202103191082392886-us-green-party-says-its-unwise-for-biden-to-ignore-putins-invitation-to-talk/

President Joe Biden waves before boarding Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Tuesday, March 16, 2021, en route to Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia.

US Green Party Says it’s Unwise for Biden to Ignore Putin’s Invitation to Talk

© AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster

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MOSCOW (Sputnik) Ekaterina Chukaeva – It would be unwise for US President Joe Biden to ignore Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to hold live discussion, so the talks between the two leaders should start immediately, members of the US Green party said.

All eyes are on Putin and Biden after the latter said on Wednesday during an interview with ABC News that Putin would “pay a price” for allegedly meddling in the US 2020 election. Biden was also asked if he believed Putin was a “killer” to which he answered affirmatively. Reacting to the statement, the Russian embassy in the US said Biden’s ill-considered words endangers the Moscow-Washington relations.

On Thursday, Putin took the floor to react to his counterpart’s comments, saying that he would just “wish him well.” He also invited the US president to a live talk on Friday or Monday, but White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said she has nothing to report on a possible conversation between the two leaders and added that Biden was planning to be in Georgia on Friday.

What Putin is suggesting is a discussion, not a debate, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov clarified on Friday. Should such talks happen, Putin could ask Biden about “the continuing groundless accusations against Russia,” Peskov said.

“It would be unwise for President Biden to ignore Putin’s invitation to talk. If today is inconvenient, there is always tomorrow. Relations between these two countries need to improve and the U.S. must recognize that it doesn’t hold the moral high ground and stop acting as if it does,” Madelyn Hoffman, a member of the NJ Green Party and a co-chair of the GP-US Peace Action Committee, who also ran for the US Senate as a Green in New Jersey in 2020, said.

According to Hoffman, Putin and Biden must start to try to work through their differences “for the good of the world” and the process of the negotiations “should have begun yesterday.”

Howie Hawkins, who was the Green Party’s nominee for the 2020 US presidential election, also believes that Putin and Biden should engage in bilateral talks.

“Biden and Putin should talk to each other instead of the public posturing they are both doing. Nuclear disarmament and the climate emergency should be at the top of their agenda,” Hawkins said.

World Does Not Need New Cold War

As tensions between Washington and Moscow grow, the peace and justice movement is concerned that they might have triggered the start of a new Cold War, which “should never have happened,” Hoffman says.

“The increasing tensions between the U.S. and Russia are extremely disturbing because they expose the terrible hypocrisy of the U.S. government without addressing it at all. The U.S. is criticizing Russia for the very behaviors the U.S. peace and justice movement criticizes the U.S. government for doing,” she said, recalling that the US is accused of interference in elections across the globe.

Relations between the US and Russia sank in 2014 under the administration of then-US President Barack Obama during the crisis in Ukraine, when Washington imposed sanctions on Moscow. Since then, the United States has expanded and tightened the sanctions regime following accusations of Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. Moscow has repeatedly denied interfering in Ukraine and the US political system.

“Since there were others who believed the story and in so doing, took the focus off how the Democrats lost an election to Donald Trump and the Republicans, it remains a convenient distraction for continued failures of either the Democrats or the Republicans to take care of the vast majority of people in the U.S. either through the establishment of a living wage or a national health insurance program and more,” she said.

With the global problems, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, Moscow and Washington could go long way toward addressing these problems by ending the “war of words” and the “economic war”, according to Hoffman.

“There is no need for continued and escalating animosity between these two countries,” she said.

The leaders should discuss a number of issues, including the nuclear disarmament and broken arms control treaties, while the US should review the policy of sanctions toward a number of countries, she said. The US should also withdraw its troops from Syria and end its “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq, Hoffman said, adding that any one of these actions might help reduce tension between the US and Russia.

“The world does not need a new Cold War. The U.S. and Russia need to acknowledge that and find ways to bring about peace,” she concluded.

Green Party VP Candidate: DNC Should Address Its Own Dysfunction, Not Russiagate
worker | December 20, 2017 | 8:15 pm | Green Party, political struggle | Comments closed
Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein answers questions from members of the media during a campaign stop at Humanist Hall in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016

Green Party VP Candidate: DNC Should Address Its Own Dysfunction, Not Russiagate

© AP Photo/ D. Ross Cameron
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https://sputniknews.com/us/201712211060187685-DNC-address-dysfunction-not-russigate-jill-stein/

Rather than continuing to look outside for explanations for its failure, the Democratic Party should do some soul searching, Green Party 2016 vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka told Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary.

This week, US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was requested to comply with a document search by the US Senate Intelligence Committee, the latest twist in a mushrooming Russiagate narrative seeking evidence that the Russian government interfered in last year’s US election somehow.

​Stein’s major misdeed — besides, of course, daring to challenge Clinton — was to attend an RT-funded dinner in Russia in November 2015. Stein is accused of allowing Moscow to fund her travel there, a charge she denies.

“I paid my own way to Moscow. They [the Russian government] did not pay for my hotel or expenses and I have the receipts to prove it,” Stein told Alternet.

Baraka, who is also the national organizer for Black Alliance for Peace, told By Any Means Necessary’s hosts Eugene Puryear and Sean Blackmon that the Senate investigation actually sheds light on hypocrisy in the Democratic National Committee.

“You go to the various urban environments and you see the destitution that black working class people are facing and you see that the obvious reality is that those urban environments are run by corporate Democrats, many of whom are black Democrats. And the neoliberal order is unable to address the needs of these people and more and more people become critical of the system and come to the conclusion that this very system itself cannot work for the people,” Baraka explained.

“The targeting of the Green Party — these are all preemptive moves by the DNC to divert the American people’s attention from the real source of the problems and the contradictions within the DNC. Jill Stein’s statement was pointing to the inherent issues within the so-called democratic process in this country where money rules and corruption has been legitimized.”

Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein
© AP Photo/ Alex Brandon
‘A Kind of Surprise’: Stein Finds Herself Targeted by Anti-Russia Smear Campaign

Rather than attacking those who point out its shortcomings, the DNC should do some introspection “and provide explanations to why their systems are dysfunctional,” Baraka said.

“The majority of the American people have no faith in either one of the American parties. They have no faith in Congress as a whole,” he added.

Stein released a statement Tuesday saying that while her campaign “strongly supports legitimate inquiry into any illegal activity,” it also “caution[s] against the politicization, sensationalism and collapse of journalistic standards that has plagued media coverage of the investigation.”

“In the current climate of attacks on our civil liberties, with the emergence of censorship in social media and the press, criminalization of protest, militarization of police and massive expansion of the surveillance state, we must guard against the potential for these investigations to be used to intimidate and silence principled opposition to the political establishment,” the statement reads.

Loud & Clear
1950s All Over Again: Jill Stein is New ‘Russia Collusion’ Target

In a interview with Alternet, Stein described the investigation into the Green Party as evidence of a “new McCarthyism, which is the flip side of a military madness that is stronger than ever in this country.”

“This is the continuing focus of empire and austerity and the assault on democracy that goes with it. The silver lining is we will get a chance at the microphone. A lot of people will be screaming at us but some people will hear us.”

Baraka suggests that it is time for progressive and radical political movements to harness the power of grassroots organizing to appeal to the many politically disaffected Americans.

Senate Investigation Into Jill Stein Only ‘Criminalizing Diplomacy with Russia’
worker | December 19, 2017 | 7:21 pm | Green Party, Russia | Comments closed
Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein answers questions from members of the media during a campaign stop at Humanist Hall in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201712201060150536-senate-investigation-jill-stein-criminalizing-diplomacy-with-russia/

Senate Investigation Into Jill Stein Only ‘Criminalizing Diplomacy with Russia’

© AP Photo/ D. Ross Cameron
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On Tuesday, former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein announced that she will be cooperating with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election.

“We are cooperating by sharing all communications relevant to the committee’s mission,” Stein wrote in a Facebook post. “We support safeguarding our elections from interference, while at the same time we caution strongly against the targeting of political opposition.”

According to reports, investigators requested documents from Stein’s presidential campaign in order to look into the 67-year-old Chicagoan’s attendance at a 2015 banquet sponsored by RT, a news agency funded by the Russian government.

But to David Cobb, Stein’s 2016 campaign manager, the whole ordeal is simply “an example of a new era of McCarthyism.”

Speaking to Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear, Cobb reaffirmed Stein’s commitment to cooperating with the investigation, but doubled down on the notion that the probe has much deeper motives.

“Let’s be clear that the only critique or the concern that folks have seems to be that Jill Stein, as a presidential candidate, went to Moscow and attended a banquet being hosted by RT America, a news agency,” Cobb told show hosts Brian Becker and John Kiriakou. “Since when has that ever been a problem?”

Jill Stein speaking at the Green Party Presidential Candidate Town Hall hosted by the Green Party of Arizona at the Mesa Public Library in Mesa, Arizona. (File)
© Flickr/ Gage Skidmore
Michigan Court Kills Jill Stein’s Final Bid to Revive US Election Recount

Fellow guest Max Blumenthal, a journalist who also attended the 2015 event, explained that Stein’s motive for attending was to talk about peace initiatives.

“Jill had an agenda which was to talk about nuclear proliferation and de-escalation in Syria with any official she could meet with,” Blumenthal said. “In the end she only wound up speaking briefly with an official in the Russian Duma… and they discussed her agenda, which she laid out on the Green Party’s website.”

The issue that triggered the Stein probe, Blumenthal speculates, was a photograph that showed Stein seated at the same table as Michael Flynn and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

​”Problem was that after the banquet there was a photograph of Jill seated at a table… with a general who no one knew at the time… they referred to him dismissively as the ‘Obama general,'” Blumenthal said. “This is really the basis of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation.”

Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein answers questions from members of the media during a campaign stop at Humanist Hall in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016
© AP Photo/ D. Ross Cameron
Jill Stein Comes Under Trump Jr.-Russia Probe Scrutiny

Echoing Blumenthal’s sentiments, Cobb said, “we have to come to terms with the fact that we are living in a moment where we are seeing a demonization… an effort to reconstitute ‘communist scare.'”

Blumenthal, who also hosts the “Moderate Rebels” podcast, called Stein’s being caught up in the mushrooming collusion investigation “just collateral damage.”

“The bipartisan investigation, which is also being stimulated by leaks from the national security state, is really aimed at ultimately criminalizing diplomacy with Russia and driving a new cold war, which will be a boom to defense contractors,” Blumenthal said.

Russian officials continue to deny all accusations of interference in the 2016 election.

Green Party of New Orleans opposes monument legislation
worker | May 31, 2017 | 8:40 pm | Action, Announcements, Green Party, Local/State, political struggle, struggle against slavery, Struggle for African American equality | Comments closed

Green Party of New Orleans opposes monument legislation

by
109gp
on May 18, 2017

http://www.lagreens.org/monument_legislation?utm_campaign=gpnola_may17f&utm_medium=email&utm_source=greenpartylouisiana

The Green Party of New Orleans decries current efforts of the state legislature to impede the removal of Confederate monuments from our local streetscape. 

“The Green Party finds that local grassroots governing best serves communities,” said Anika Ofori, a Green Party of New Orleans organizer and member of the Green Party of the United States Black Caucus. “Recent events reveal the psychological significance of these confederate monuments very clearly. Removing these monuments to a place where their history is recognized, as Confederates, can be achieved in an appropriate location.”

The fight to have such monuments removed is decades long. In 2015, the will of the people and the will of our municipality converged into an overwhelming vote to remove. These monuments were deemed public nuisances and declared to no longer represent the values the city wishes to achieve in our future.

Legislative opposition, just as the final plans for removal are implemented, shows how important it is for the city to continue with the removal. The state legislature’s attempt to block the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee meddles in our city’s concerted resolve to remove public exaltation of the crime of slavery.

Given the Legislative Black Caucus’ walkout from this process, this legislation creates the specter of largely white legislators’ foisting racist laws on the state’s largest city, which also happens to be majority African American.

“Sadly, this is nothing new,” said local party member David Bryan. “It is clear that the state legislature identifies with monied interests at the expense of the state’s most vulnerable and largely African American citizens.”

In 2002, New Orleanians approved a referendum increasing the city’s minimum wage by one dollar over the federal minimum wage, and the state promptly outlawed this modest pay increase for some of her poorest citizens. In 1998, New Orleans’ then-mayor Marc Morial filed a class-action lawsuit against gun manufacturers for the gun violence plaguing the city. Despite a decade of record-setting murders in New Orleans, Louisiana’s legislature sided with the gun manufacturers over the interests of her own citizens and passed legislation that retroactively stopped the lawsuit.

“We are alarmed at the continued attempt to abrogate and override local municipal control,” said Ryan Hargis, Secretary of the Green Party of Louisiana. “The decentralization of political power is a key value for Greens. Decision-making must remain with the communities most affected by the decisions.”

CALL TO ACTION: We urge all Greens in Louisiana, and any residents who care about these issues, to contact their senators and urge them to oppose House Bill 71, House Bill 292, Senate Bill 198, and any other bills which would impede the will of the people in removing monuments to white supremacy.

Find your legislators via the Louisiana State Legislature website.

Green Party of New Orleans statement on monuments
worker | May 15, 2017 | 7:55 pm | African American history, Announcements, Green Party, struggle against slavery, Struggle for African American equality | Comments closed

http://www.lagreens.org/nola_monuments?utm_campaign=gpnola_may17&utm_medium=email&utm_source=greenpartylouisiana

by
107gp
on May 09, 2017

The Green Party of New Orleans enthusiastically supports the City’s efforts to remove monuments to white supremacy from the streets of New Orleans, and we wholeheartedly endorse the efforts of Take Em Down NOLA in pressing the demands of this cause.

Jefferson Davis, Slave Owner

As students of history, we know that these monuments were not erected as memorials to the Civil War so much as symbols aiming to reinforce the dominant ideology of white supremacy. The Confederacy, after all, lost the war, and slavery was outlawed; the monuments were designed to say, “Yet still, we rule.” They were designed to maintain and reproduce a harsh and rigid racial caste system.

It is time to unequivocally repudiate this oppressive system. Removing these monuments is symbolic of that ongoing effort.

We understand the value of historical artifacts. We call on the City administration to take great care with the monuments, once removed, to ensure that they are placed in a proper educational context, where they can be studied and remembered for what they are.

We are proud of the leading role that liberatory activists in our city have played in the long struggle for justice. At the same time, we recognize that this work is far from complete. As the struggle continues, we aim to work with those who organize and fight for justice and liberty.

[Revised 13 May 2017]

Communists of France: Macron or Le Pen, Either Way More Struggle
worker | May 6, 2017 | 7:56 pm | Analysis, Announcements, class struggle, Communist Revolutionary Party of France, Fascist terrorism, France, French Communist Party (PCF), Green Party, Marxism-Leninism Today (MLToday.com), Pole of the Communist Rebirth in France (PRCF), political struggle, socialism | Comments closed

https://mltoday.com/article/2743-communists-of-france-macron-or-le-pen-either-way-more-struggle/90-frontpage-stories

Via International Communist Press, 25 April 2017

The declarations of the Revolutionary Communist Party of France (PCRF), the Revolutionary Party-Communists (PRC), the Pole of the Communist Rebirth in France (PRCF) and Pierre Laurent on behalf of the French Communist Party (PCF) on the first round of the presidential elections in France

Following the first  round  of the presidential elections that were held on April 23, Emmanuel Macron of the Forward! (EM) movement and Marine Le Pen of National Front (FN) qualifying to the second round, we share some extracts of the declarations of the Revolutionary Communist Party of France (PCRF), the Revolutionary Party-Communists (PRC), the Pole of the Communist Rebirth in France (PRCF) and Pierre Laurent on behalf of the French Communist Party (PCF). The second and final round of the elections will be held on May 7.

PCRF: ‘The results of the elections manifest itself by a 4% increase of the stock market CAC 40’
PCRF calls ‘the workers, as well as the democrats worried about the last five-year term, to refuse the Macron-Le Pen swindle by voting neither for one nor for the other’ at the second tour of the presidential elections. The party underlines that ‘[t]he challenge of the second round is not bourgeoisie democracy or fascism’.

‘…the candidate chosen by the grand bourgeoisie, the banker Emmanuel Macron, launched by François Hollande, the chargé d’affaire of the Capital, took first place ahead of Marine Le Pen, of the National Front. The latter represents the increasing strength of the ultra-reactionary current of the public opinion, the reserve force of the bourgeoisie and its mass of maneuver.’

‘… contrary to what the media bangs on about, we take into account the political character of the abstention and blank vote and spoilt vote, which concerns the popular strata, who do not feel represented since the betrayal of the directors of PCF. It is a question of the first “party” of France.’

PRC: ‘There is nothing good to expect from these two candidates, the candidates of the capital’
PRC calls ‘voting for none of the candidates’ or put the ballot paper in the name of the party’s unofficial candidate Antonio Sanchez in the ballot-envelope at the second tour of the presidential elections.

‘We say it once again that in France there are economic, financial, cultural and social means to apply a large-scale policy of economic and social development in the service of the people to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, to increase the minimum wage and all the salaries, the pensions. France should stop participating in imperialist wars and develop a large-scale policy of peace in order to insure the security of the people.’

PRCF: ‘It is not question of awarding Macron with a certificate of anti-fascism’
PRCF stated that ‘[b]y relentlessly campaigning among the popular strata in order to decrease the votes of the National Front, we have to make this party of hatred retreat as much as possible…’ and ‘for all that, while the Right (Fillon, Juppé etc.) and PS call already for vote Macron, PRCF will not back this candidate whose ultra-maastrichtian politics that aim for dissolve the nation, accompanying the wars of the US, pulverizing all the social acqusitions…hence, nourishing National Front which thrives on all these social and national betrayals in order to usurp and pervert the reference to the nation’

‘The militants of the PRCF will react in the field in order to reduce the score of National Front in labor class districts since this party dishonors France, divides the labor class, pushes the country to an intercommunity war and fascisation, even the road to the police state that was largely paved by the governments of Republicans (LR) and Socialist Party (PS) (which, still, no long time ago, tries to ban mass union demonstrations) since decades.’

PL: ‘This situation is extremely grave for our country’
Pierre Laurent, Secretary General of PCF, made the declaration below:

‘The second round of the French presidential election will be a contest between the racist and xenophobic candidate of the far right, Marine Le Pen, and Emmanuel Macron, the candidate selected by the financial world to reinforce the liberal policies afflicting our country for the past 40 years.

This situation is extremely grave for our country. The far-right reached the second round and the left has been eliminated. However, for the first time in decades, millions of citizens, striving for social change, nearly succeeded in carrying their candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon to the second round. Voters who were betrayed by the policies of Hollande and Valls and who worked hard to bring Jean-Luc Mélenchon to the second round are today experiencing mixed and sometimes contradictory feelings.

At this writing and given the first results available to us, we would like to say to these voters that the nearly 20% score obtained by Jean-Luc Mélenchon raises a new hope for the future, for the reinvention of the new left our country has been waiting for, to unlock the political system and democracy. This result is remarkable and is the first time since 1981 that a candidate representing social transformation has achieved such a score.

The struggle continues for millions of young people, women and men who aspire to a new society free from the tyranny of profitability; people seeking the true left and policies of justice and social progress that refuse austerity, unemployment and social insecurity.

We are entering a completely new and exceptional period in the history of our country. Notwithstanding the diversion of “presidentialisation” and its traps, the event is momentous: the two parties, the Socialists and the Républicains, who have dominated French political life for 40 years, were eliminated in the fist round of voting.

Aspiration for change, for a new choice of society, will continue to grow inexorably. The mobilisation of youth and working-class neighbourhoods is a promise for the future.

For us, this is the essential lesson of the campaign: nothing is more urgent than to continue to remain open to these new aspirations for a genuine citizens’ democracy, to seek the path that will enable us to join forces to build a new social, ecological Republic of solidarity, respectful of diversity and the expectations of our people.

This is a struggle that the Communist Party intends to pursue with all political, social and citizen forces available. We have unprecedented advantages going forward.

We applaud the campaign of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, all activists from the Communist Party, the Front de Gauche, la France insoumise, elected representatives from the Communist Party and the Front de Gauche, and all the citizens who were engaged and voted. This result belongs to you.

The commitment of our party, our activists, and elected officials representing the values of the Republic to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s campaign brought about promising new alliances. Jean-Luc Mélenchon achieved very good results in cities, cantons and districts where the Communist Party is well established and has a significant network of activists and representatives.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s results demonstrate a deep desire for change, for greater honesty in politics, more social justice, solidarity, genuine democracy, peace, and respect for the environment.

The French left has opened a new page in history with this campaign. It is a new era for the left. The Communist Party is completely invested in this revitalization through our project, La France en commun, and fully focused on the challenges of the 21st Century.

At this time, aware of the huge battles to come and the responsibilities that our party bears, for the second round of voting on 7 May we call for a vote that will block Marine Le Pen’s bid for the presidency and thwart the menace she and her clan represent for democracy, the Republic and peace; unfortunately, there is only one ballot that can be used to that effect.

Marine Le Pen seeks a society of hatred, the rejection of others, racism and xenophobia; a society that would divide those with common interests to benefit her own clan and financial powers; a society that would scorn the fundamental principles of equality and fraternity in the Republic in favour of discrimination among the French, among people who live and work in our country, based on their origins and nationality. We do not want this.

Marine Le Pen wants a dangerous world where all types of war would become possible, where nationalist rivalries would be encouraged. With Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad, and the European far-right movements as allies, she would threaten world security if she were president of France, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. We do not want this.

It is our duty, for today and for future generations, to prevent her from becoming president of our Republic, which would mean that the far-right would have control of all of the instruments of the State.

Our appeal for 7 May is obviously in no case a show of support for the neoliberal, anti-social programme of Emmanuel Macron, which we opposed when he was a minister and which we will continue to fight without concession whenever workers and their rights and public services are under attack.

Appeals will be made on the occasion of the 1st of May demonstrations by trade unions, and we call for broad participation in International Workers’ Day events to express our mobilisation against the far right and in support of peace, democracy and social progress.

Faced with the ballot choices of the second round of presidential elections, the legislative elections to be held 11 and 18 June are of crucial importance. Citizens who carried the banner for social transformation by voting Jean-Luc Mélenchon must now persevere and break through with the legislative elections. The National Assembly can act as a counter-weight to the policies advanced by the government following the second round of the presidential election on 7 May.

On the strength of the result obtained this Sunday, we can elect numerous honest députés, representatives who will be close to you and defend the interests of the people, as Communists MPs have done for five years, in particular against the so-called Macron and El Khomri laws. These representatives will resist the right and the far right, will not make alliances with MPs from Macron’s party to approve anti-social laws. These MPs will be a force of resistance and hope in the face of financial greed, fighting hatred and division.

Communists are fully invested in this legislative battle, which we have understood to be essential from day one; it is as important as the presidential election. The French Communist Party is presenting and supporting a new generation of candidates, an equal number of men and women, to bring the people’s voice into the National Assembly.

As of this evening, and in the next 48 hours, the Communist Party calls on the forces of the left and progress, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s team and those from la France insoumise, all of the forces engaged in the campaign, supporters of Benoît Hamon, Socialists and Greens, women and men who want to rebuild a dynamic force on the left for social transformation, to meet, to debate publically and prepare for these decisive elections together: the second round of the presidential election and the legislative elections to be held on 11 and 18 June.

The French Communist Party is ready to engage at once in this effort.’

May Day 2017: Unite and fight!
worker | May 3, 2017 | 8:38 pm | Analysis, Canada, class struggle, Communist Party Canada, Donald Trump, Green Party, Labor, political struggle, socialism, Struggle for Peace, struggle for socialism, struggle for the equality of women, Syria, USSR, Women's rights, Youth | Comments closed

Source: CP Canada website

Unite and fight for jobs, democracy, sovereignty, equality and socialism!

We celebrate May Day 2017 in the shadow of the Trump war machine which has moved the whole planet into extreme danger of extinction due to nuclear war and/or climate change.  According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, it took just 100 days in office for the Trump administration to move the Doomsday Clock to 2 and a half minutes to midnight.  The world hasn’t been this close to Doomsday since 1953, at the height of the Cold War when the US openly campaigned for war with the USSR.  Is this the end of history that capitalism’s triumphant spokesman Fukuyama proclaimed in the 1990s?

For the last 25 years, capitalism has had the upper hand, and the ability to demonstrate its self-proclaimed ‘superiority’. Its enormous wealth and capacity could have been put to the service of the world’s exploited and impoverished billions with health care, education, jobs, development, peace and disarmament, and action to reduce the effects of climate change. In fact this is socialist Cuba’s contribution over the past 25 years, despite the US embargo.

But capitalism did what capitalism always does – seek out new places and new ways to exploit and to profit from the misery of the many, for the benefit of the richest corporations and the wealthiest few. This is the nature and the purpose of capitalism:  the exploitation of one human being and one class by another, for the private profit and benefit of the ruling class at the expense of the working people, the youth, women, immigrants, Indigenous Peoples. It is incapable of addressing the needs of the people, or the needs of the planet, because its purpose is to ruthlessly exploit both.

As a result austerity has been introduced across the capitalist world, and wages, pensions and living standards have fallen in all the advanced capitalist countries, including in Europe and North America, while unemployment – and the growth of the ultra-right and its policies of xenophobia, racism, and misogyny – has surged.  In the developing countries, hunger, debt, dependence, and capitalist globalization, and threats of invasion and ‘regime change’ are the reality of capitalism’s self-proclaimed ‘superiority’ over national sovereignty, independence and socialism.

We see the outcome of this dictatorship of the most powerful corporations in the US today: the ultra-right in control of the White House, the Congress and Senate, and the judiciary.  With an agenda to match: corporate tax cuts, deregulation, free-trade benefiting the most powerful US corporations, militarization funded by massive cuts to social security, and war with the two-pronged objective of leveling all resistance to US corporate power and profits inside and outside the US borders.  This means war on the labour and peoples’ movements at home, war and subjugation on nations and states around the world, and war on the planet itself.

This is an agenda of global destruction that the Canadian government should strongly oppose.

But the Liberals have tiptoed around the Trump administration, supporting illegal US airstrikes on Syria and Afghanistan, threats to invade and overthrow the DPRK (North Korea), and any country that resists the US global corporate agenda. The Liberals have promised to double Canada’s military budget in order to pay NATO 2% of GDP as demanded by Trump, or in lieu of payment, to send Canadian troops wherever Trump decides to make war next.

And, instead of pulling out of NAFTA and exposing the US administration’s reactionary and job-destroying agenda on trade, the Liberals are supporting a renegotiation of NAFTA that will wreak havoc on Canadian jobs, manufacturing and agriculture, on resource development, on universal public Medicare, on labour and democratic rights, on sovereignty and independence.  This is the moment when Trudeau should have said NO.

NO to NAFTA – NO to war

Canada is at a crossroads. In one direction, the Liberals’ team-up with the Trump administration will escalate Canada’s complete integration into the US war economy and politics.  This would mean Canada would lose its manufacturing and industrial sector and revert to a source of natural resources and a market for US value-added goods and services.  We will see a further drop in wages, pensions and living standards, where even minimum wages are not guaranteed.  We will also lose Medicare and universal social programs, our labour, civil, social and democratic rights, along with what remains of our sovereignty and independence.  In return, we become a completely integrated part of the US war machine, spending $40 billion a year on war (and rising).

For corporate Canada and their political parties this may seem like a good way to go. For working people it’s a fast-forward freeway to disaster.

It’s deeply regrettable that the NDP and Greens both support US airstrikes on Syria and renegotiation of NAFTA, while also claiming  to represent the interests of working people.

It’s also disturbing that the outgoing CLC leadership has taken the same position, when NAFTA was widely panned and opposed as the corporate agenda on steroids.

In 1988, just a few months of campaigning by a broad-based coalition of labour and the democratic people’s movements nearly derailed the first free trade deal between Canada and the US.  This powerful movement against capitalist globalization succeeded in derailing both the MAI and the FTAA, and came close to blocking NAFTA.

Similarly, massive anti-war and anti-globalization protests took place around the globe during the same period, mobilizing public opinion against nuclear weapons, and for political solutions to global problems.

The Women’s March of 5 million women globally including 200,000 women in Canada, along with the struggles of Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, and mobilizations for climate justice, show the way forward today.

The struggle of the youth and minimum wage workers to win $15 and Fairness, and the response of the labour movement in Quebec to make $15 a universal bargaining demand, is the way forward.  The response of some unions in BC and Ontario to make $15 a basic bargaining demand, and to win it after striking on it, is the way forward.  It’s a political and economic fight that the CLC should adopt at its May convention.

The fight to pull out of NAFTA and adopt a trade policy that’s multi-lateral and mutually beneficial, creating value-added jobs, building  sustainable primary and secondary industry and manufacturing, will need the CLC to bring the labour movement and its allies into the streets, to oppose capitalist corporate globalization supported by both Trump and the Big Business parties in Canada.

Mass mobilizations are also needed to get Canada out of NATO, to bring Canadian troops home, and to adopt a foreign policy of peace and disarmament.

Workers in Canada can show their solidarity and support for workers’ struggles globally by standing shoulder to shoulder in opposition to austerity and war, capitalist globalization, Islamophobia, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia, reaction and fascism.  They can stand with Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Palestine, and all those countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa fighting for their right to self-determination and independence from US interference, including those who choose a socialist path of development.

Working people, youth, women, the unemployed and labour must use their united might to oppose compromise with US war-mongers and the reactionary, fascist-supported administration of Trump’s government of oilmen, generals and bankers.

A People’s Agenda for Canada

Labour and its partners must unite and fight for a People’s Agenda for Canada, organizing mass mobilizations to campaign for:

  • Fair trade, not NAFTA – multi-lateral trade with all countries that is beneficial to all parties, and includes long term credits for developing and socialist countries;
  • A foreign policy of peace and disarmament – Get out of NATO and NORAD, Cut military spending by 75%, bring home Canadian troops involved in foreign wars;
  • Fight Climate Change – nationalize natural and energy resources; close the tar sands and guarantee jobs in public development of new energy sources such as solar, wind, thermal, and renewable energy;
  •  Create Jobs – invest in a national housing program to build affordable social housing across Canada; invest in value-added manufacturing, including a Canadian car and urban and inter-urban mass rapid transit; agricultural implements industry; machine tool industry; ship-building; expand social programs;
  •  Raise wages and incomes – raise the minimum wage to $20; substantially increase pensions and drop the age for a full pension and OAS to 60; introduce a guaranteed annual income at a living wage; increase EI to 90% of former earnings and expand to cover all job seekers including part-time and first-time job seekers   Enact universal pay and employment equity; repeal the Temporary Foreign Workers Act;
  • Expand immigration and refugee acceptance and re-settlement; scrap the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement;
  • Expand universal social programs and Medicare, and introduce a system of universally accessible, affordable, quality public childcare;
  • Eliminate tuition fees and make post-secondary education accessible to all;
  • Protect and expand civil, social, labour and democratic rights.  Enforce and enact anti-hate laws.

Another world is possible – and urgent! 

In this centenary year of the victory of the Great October Revolution, which opened the door to socialism and workers’ power around the world, we recall the historic struggle of the working class in Russia to create a society free of exploitation and oppression, a society of equality and justice, where working people were in the driver’s seat and corporations, greedy landowners and landlords were put out of business, and war-mongers and profiteers sent packing.  With 100 years of both heroic and painful experience of war and fascism, and the overthrow of the socialist states in Europe, we know that socialism represents the future, and capitalism is the past.  There is no other rung on the ladder of human development between capitalism and socialism.  The time has come – is overdue – for working people to take control of our own destiny, to establish working class political power.

In the struggles ahead, working people will build socialism anew, learning from the experiences of the past and building for the future.  The struggle continues, more urgent than ever.

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