Vol. 80/No. 40 October 24, 2016

‘SWP is your party’ — the alternative to Trump, Clinton

BY MAGGIE TROWE

A recently released 2005 video of Donald Trump bragging in vulgar terms about using his fame and wealth to aggressively grope and press himself on women disgusted millions of workers.

The propertied rulers, their mouthpieces in the editorial offices of the major media and the Republican presidential candidate’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton have all ratcheted up their efforts to prevent Trump’s election. Paul Ryan, John McCain and other machine Republicans, tepidly backing the Republican nominee at best, are defecting.

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck said opposing Trump is the “moral, ethical choice,” even if it means a Clinton victory.

The video and other crude or demagogic remarks by the candidate hand the rulers an excuse to rail against a Trump victory. Their vitriol, however, is aimed not at Trump himself or his policies, but at the millions of workers angry about the impact of the grinding capitalist depression who back him or who reject Clinton, Obama and politics-as-usual. Regardless of the outcome of the election, the propertied owners fear that more and more workers are losing confidence in the traditional bourgeois parties and looking for a new road forward.

“Rarely has the gulf between elite and non-elite yawned so wide in US politics,” Gillian Tett wrote in an Oct. 9 Financial Times article after talking with workers in the upstate New York town of Inlet.

David Leonhardt used his first New York Times op-ed column Oct. 11 to appeal to the rulers and the well-off meritocratic professional layer he is a part of, saying they will pay a price for being disconnected from and contemptuous of those suffering from the economic crisis. The U.S. economy is bogged down in “the great American stagnation,” he says, calling it “the central challenge of our time.”

“[R]ejecting Trump isn’t enough,” he says. Defeating Trump will not do away with what the media calls the “Trump Movement.” Angry workers will not go away.

Leonhardt advises the rulers to lessen their attacks and make economic concessions. But the bosses don’t “choose” to attack the working class, they are driven to do so. They will continue and deepen their attacks as the only road they see out of the deep crisis of their capitalist system.

“The mass rejection of Trump’s conduct in the video shows how widespread working-class respect for women’s rights and dignity is,” Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy told workers as she campaigned in Washington, D.C., Oct. 11. “But both candidates are contemptuous of workers, and the pornographication of capitalist politics erupts because the wealthy have no way forward.

“The Socialist Workers Party has confidence in the ability of the working class in its millions — Caucasian, African-American, Asian, Latino, U.S.-born and immigrant,” she said. “We can unite, defend ourselves and build an international movement to end the dictatorship of capital, transforming ourselves as we do it.

We say ‘Join the SWP!’

“We reject the coarseness, corruption and arrogance of the capitalist candidates, whose system depends on war, exploitation and dog-eat-dog human relations,” Kennedy said. “We say, join with the Socialist Workers Party to act in our class interests and fight to replace this system with a workers and farmers government based on human solidarity.”

Kennedy and Cynthia Jaquith, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from Florida, were part of a fact-finding and solidarity visit with workers in the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico in September. They campaigned together in Orlando and Kissimmee, Florida, Oct. 3, talking about the impact of the crisis on workers in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

The region is growing as thousands of Puerto Ricans move there, hoping to find relief from staggering unemployment and social crisis on the island.

“The severe economic crisis affecting the whole world came to Puerto Rico sooner and is having a more devastating impact because the island is a colony of the United States,” Kennedy told Información al Desnudo reporter Edwin Chungo Molina in Orlando.

Molina asked Kennedy about the PROMESA law adopted by the U.S. Congress and the fiscal control board it imposes on Puerto Rico. The junta has the right to sell assets, lay off government workers and lower the minimum wage in order to pay Puerto Rico’s debts to the big bondholders.

“I oppose PROMESA,” Kennedy said. “It’s a law to strangle the Puerto Rican people and should be outlawed. And I would free independence fighter Oscar López now.”

When Kennedy’s running mate Osborne Hart visited the Seattle area he talked with teacher Carol Brouillette on her porch Oct. 10. She liked Hart and Kennedy’s biographies and their program, but asked, “Aren’t you too late? People don’t know about you.”

“The capitalists don’t want to acknowledge our existence, but the Socialist Workers Party is getting more press coverage because there are reporters who know many workers are angry about worsening conditions and are repelled by the bourgeois candidates,” Hart said. “Bringing the SWP to the working class doesn’t end Nov. 8. We are building the party day after day, 365 days a year, as we meet workers like you in working-class areas and in labor and social struggles.”

Brouillette bought a copy of Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes and a Militant subscription.

“After receiving a sample ballot and seeing your name, I decided to look you up,” Christin Cope-Hill, a union and women’s rights supporter who has worked in the western oil fields and in the automotive industry in Colorado, wrote to Kennedy Oct. 8. “I am so glad I did. It was inspirational seeing everything you’ve fought for over the years and all the work you’ve done and continue to do. It was so refreshing to see that the fight continues. So thank you. Just for existing. You’ve inspired me to keep my chin up and do what I can to spread the message.”

Anthony Dutrow in Miami, Arlene Rubinstein in Washington, D.C., and Mary Martin in Seattle contributed to this article.