November 22 2011

Part one: Strategy and tactics in this moment

The resounding vote that affirmed collective bargaining rights for public workers in Ohio sets the tone and contains many lessons for the 2012 elections, just one year out from now.  Congratulations Ohio!

The impact of years of corporate profit gouging is giving way to a new level of fight back and activism in our country and internationally as well. The 99% are saying, "Enough is enough!"

Since the 2010 election in which Tea Party Republican candidates won contests for Governors and for Congress, the class war has become more vicious against working people while, at the same time, at the grassroots class consciousness has been raised and the fight back to tax the rich and protect worker's rights has strengthened.  

From the moment Barack Obama was elected President by a broad alliance and cross section of the electorate, the corporate driven and lavishly funded extreme right-wing went on a rampage, blocking basic legislation that can bring the country out of economic crisis, and attempting to take back every progressive gain from the New Deal to the Civil Rights movement.

Therefore, the struggle in which we are engaged is a struggle to protect and expand basic democratic rights. To win this sharp battle will take unbreakable unity by all democratic minded people, and especially from the labor movement, racially oppressed, women and youth - the core forces for social change.

The extreme wealth gap and resulting unemployment, homelessness and lack of educational opportunity has also brought a growing number of people to search for new avenues of independent political expression, and for some, to question the capitalist system.

We are in a unique position to engage in this discussion because of our vision for fundamental change and our historical experience, which teaches us that the grave dangers posed by the extreme right wing can become reality unless there is full unity to defeat them.

Our approach to the 2012 elections is a big responsibility. A key aspect must be to sound the alarm and expose the objectives of the Republicans, which are dominated by Tea Party politics. Whatever populist rhetoric is used, these are the policies of the strongest sectors of the ruling class including finance, the military industrial complex and energy.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL CIO, expressed the outrage felt by millions this week when Republicans called for a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for the super rich.

"Yesterday Republicans on the so-called "Super Committee" proposed lowering tax rates for the richest Americans while cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in Social Security and Medicare benefits that middle class Americans depend on. This is Robin Hood in reverse: class warfare against the American middle class on behalf of the top 1 percent," he said.

Every Republican presidential candidate supports cuts of Social Security and Medicare as well as ending all regulations on business. The Republican candidates were quick to oppose the decision of the President to bring the troops home from Iraq.

As Sam said in his report, to get an idea what would be in store with a Tea Party friendly president and Congress we need only look at the actions of the governors of Ohio and Wisconsin.

Ohio and Wisconsin also provide the example of the kind of unity needed to turn back this danger, raise the level of class consciousness, and lay the foundations for moving onto the offensive.

Growing unity and class consciousness

"We Are One" was the slogan and idea that took Wisconsin and the country by storm at the beginning of this year, coming out of the difficult 2010 elections. We Are One. A powerful, fighting idea born out of the vicious all-out attack by a new Tea Party Governor against public workers and their communities.

 "We Are One" brought together in the hundreds of thousands teachers with farmers, firefighters with machinists, students with laborers saying, "We will no longer be divided against one another." This message reverberated from union to union and statehouse to statehouse resisting attacks on workers rights swept across the nation. Two Republican allies of the Governor in the State Senate were defeated in an unprecedented recall election. The campaign to recall Gov. Walker has already begun.

 "We Are Ohio" carried Ohio, a tough swing state, though an unprecedented upsurge led by the labor movement which succeeded in soundly rejecting the even more vicious union-busting SB 5, mobilizing thousands of union members and other volunteers over many months standing up for their rights and their future, and becoming a national example for voter education and mobilization in 2012. The Koch brothers' FreedomWorks and the Alliance for America's Future poured in $30 million. But direct visits and voter contact by labor and allies won out. This experience, including the outstanding role of our Party, deserves careful study so that all the lessons can be drawn and made widely known.

A further development of the new level of unity came with the slogan and idea, "Rebuild the American Dream." drawing upon the historic civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King's contributions emphasizing racial and economic equality and social justice.

This movement emerges out of an intensive summer of organizing for "jobs not cuts," including the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus jobs hearings and listening tours, and the roll out of the ten point Contract for the American Dream including proposals for large scale job creation to put people to work and meet community needs, funded by taxing the rich, ending the wars - ideas now supported by the majority of people in the country.

The American Dream Movement projects one million leadership volunteers and 2,012 candidates for the 2012 elections made possible by labor and core forces organizations with millions of members recognizing their common interests.

This organizing led up to President Obama's Labor Day address on jobs and the American Jobs Act, which began shifting the national discussion from deficits to jobs.

Against this backdrop, on September 17, Occupy Wall St. burst onto the political stage and proclaimed, "We are the 99%" Occupy Wall St. transformed the debate, pointing the finger at the obscenely richest 1%, and capturing the sentiments of the majority in the country who support taxing the rich and holding the financial corporations accountable.

Large cities and small towns responded, "We are the 99%," a unifying cry that forced its way into the media and forcing discussion away from deficits to "tax the rich" and demanding that youth no longer be locked out of the American Dream. It was a shout heard around the world.

The young people at the center of Occupy and all generations involved are searching for a more fair, just and sustainable society where they can thrive.

The message of "We are the 99%" is that we are all in this together. It therefore challenges the extreme right-wing attempts to "shrink government so small it can go down the bathtub drain," and reaffirms the idea of government's responsibility for the common good.

"We are the 99%" objectively exposes the hypocrisy of the corporate right-wing in blocking any taxes on the super rich at the expense of jobs and human needs while complaining about the deficit. Tea Party calls for no tax increases are a protection for the 1%, just as the shell game the Republicans are playing on the Super Committee is all about yet another extension for the $4 trillion tax cuts to the super rich..

These slogans and contents reflect a growing class consciousness - We Are One, We are the 99%, They are the 1%, identifying Wall St. as the main enemy. Objectively they reflect an awareness of class struggle and willingness to fight back - not as individuals but as a class.

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In this way, the 2012 election is the immediate struggle that can move the process forward for fundamental change, for bill of rights socialism. As one of our state committee members in Connecticut likes to say: "The revolution isn't somewhere down the road. The revolution is now and here in what we are doing."

Read more at

THE COMMUNIST PARTY USA WEBSITE

http://cpusa.org/the-power-of-the-99-in-201/

Do not include me in the 99%

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