I just found the Militant website tonight, and I will be mailing my check in tomorrow. I know you probably get a lot of e-mails, but I had to send this.

I was struggling for over a month now, seriously wondering if there was a candidate who deserved my vote. There was none to be found, until I came across Calero/Hawkins. I was raised in a Catholic/conservative house, and swore to myself to never vote for a pro-choice candidate, but your party’s platform seems to be enough to make me do just that. That probably doesn’t mean too much to you guys, but it means the world to me. Tuesday I will vote in the first election for which I was eligible, and I will write in (if I have to—I’m in California, so I’m not sure if they will be on the ballot) Calero/Hawkins.

I’m not gonna lie. I come from a middle to upper-middle class family, so I haven’t experienced all the hardships that you all speak of, but I have seen some of them, and it truly pains me. I know what I want and think will truly work for this country, and that is a full-scale assault on the current political powers-that-be, and this vote is the first step.

I will compromise what was once my most important issue to this ideal, because I feel it truly is the right thing to do, and I want to do whatever I can to progress this revolution, if it can be called that yet. Even if you only read part of this e-mail and realize you have one more supporter, I won’t regret sending it.

Good luck, you have my vote, and maybe that of anyone who will listen to me within these next two days, because I will be talking. Who knows, maybe I’ll convince one person, and they’ll convince one person…. and so on. Thanks for giving hope. Hope for a true egalitarian society, for peace, for the common good. Thanks for giving me a reason to go to the polls on Tuesday.

Joshua Moser
by e-mail
 
 
On with SWP campaign
I was very glad when I read the first Militant (no. 42) after the election, when you wrote that even though the election is over the SWP’s campaign is not. This is the best decision you could have made, and the only thing that makes any sense. Socialist agitators need to be out there, everywhere, all the time, talking to the workers of the world. The socialist campaign doesn’t end after November 2. There was no defeat. And the revolution will not be on any election day. And while the Democrats and other bourgeois parties fade away for the next four years until next election, the SWP will not. Good work.

Per Leander
Stockholm, Sweden
 
 
Disdain for workers
All the post-election rationales that I’ve read seem to contain a strong disdain for workers and farmers. Are the media and pollsters as well as politicians becoming even more open in their disdain for us? Why now? Did this play a roll in the defeat of the Democrats? Please comment.

David Salner
Frederick, Maryland
 
 
‘Terrorism’
I would appreciate it if the Militant would explain its use of quotation marks around the word terrorism. Does this usage mean the Militant does not consider attacks on civilians to be terrorism? Also, does this usage mean that the Militant considers terrorist attacks a justified, “by any means necessary” form of retaliation for Western imperialism?

Also, regardless of whether Pat Buchanan is an incipient fascist, isn’t it true that the actions of the State of Israel are largely the fuel behind Muslim hatred of and attacks on U.S. targets? From what the Muslim terrorists themselves say, U.S. support for Israel does seem to be a key reason for Muslim hatred.

Please comment. I believe it’s essential to know where the Militant stands on these issues.

Judy Cuttler
by e-mail
 
 
Democratic rights
You mention in the November 9 issue that the opening of the firebombed SWP headquarters in Pennsylvania represents a big victory for political rights. This is absolutely correct.

However, you have mentioned nothing about the widespread attempts of primarily Republican Party supporters to prevent registered voters—primarily from poor and African-American communities in the “swing” states—from voting.

Also, the Democratic Party has definitely been involved in the attempts, many successful, to prevent the Nader/Camejo ticket from appearing on the ballot in a number of states.

Today the Democratic Party and Nader/Camejo are under attack. Tomorrow, a labor party based on the unions or the SWP and other Socialist Parties.

While I am totally opposed to supporting candidates from the twin capitalist parties, I believe that socialists should fight to support the democratic right to vote. This is a right fought for in blood since the “founding fathers” disenfranchised Blacks, propertyless men, and women.

I see the need to fight for this right just as fighters for the working class must oppose the Patriot Act, which is attempting to roll back democratic rights codified in the Bill of Rights, which also came after a struggle.

It is not an accident that the Democratic Party refused to intervene after the 2000 election when it was clear that so many Black voters had been disenfranchised in Florida.

Socialists must be visible and in the forefront of these struggles. They—and not the capitalist parties—are the only ones that will defend working people.

It may be necessary some day for workers and their allies to organize at polling places to ensure the right to vote, just as we have stood at abortion clinics to defend the law against right-wing mobs that want to deny women the right to choose.

Jeanne Corvan
New York, New York

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