APPEALS
UFCLP Appeals for the issues and demands below
Urgent Call for a Democratically Controlled, Mass Labor Party
Let’s begin our political revolution by organizing our own democratic, worker-controlled mass party!
No hollow phrases! Organize around our burning needs! Workers’ lives matter!
Establishing the workers’ own political party is inseparable from the day-to-day struggles they are facing, and the Democrats or any other bosses’ party will not move a finger for them. Yet, if we are to make a difference in our political impact as we burst on the scene, we should begin from our very concrete, very burning, very urgent needs. The members of our class are on the fight to satisfy such needs across the country and the world! We therefore propose the following list of immediate demands based on their struggles:
Urgent call for a democratically controlled, mass labor party!
We are living through a time of crisis and societal collapse. Workers are left all alone to their destiny of facing with the pandemic and the economic collapse it has brought about with no protection. At the same time, the two bosses’ parties are once again racing to blame each other to cover up the shameful and devastating shortcomings of the capitalist system. The only candidate with an agenda of some level of protection for the workers, Bernie Sanders, has cancelled his campaign and openly offered his support to Biden – a perfect example of a bosses’ politician– right in the midst of this crisis. The bosses and politicians of both parties are conspiring to send the workers to death camp-turned workplaces, bailing out the giant corporations and thus making the working class pay for the crisis, and rubbing their hands together as they plot new ways of extracting resources out of the social wealth for their private means and give a beggar’s share of $1,200 to the workers. Meanwhile, the workers are abandoned without healthcare, hygiene measures, defense mechanisms, or political voice. With no one to represent them on any national platform, the working class needs its own political voice as much and urgently as it needs bread and healthcare to express grievances and push for change! This is quite literally a life-death matter for the working class today! Forward for workers’ own party!
Fellow workers! It takes having our own party to have bread and healthcare!
Fellow workers! Our toiling siblings across the country! Look and appreciate what we have been capable of in these times of chaos! The working class is on the move all across the country. From the Amazon workers in New York and GM workers in Detroit to the McDonald’s workers, longshore workers, and teaching assistants in California, workers of every state and type are organizing strikes, walkouts, and protests to protect themselves and their class from the double-headed monster of pandemic and economic collapse. In the shadow of the pandemic, we were able to organize a massive May Day action across the nation to shout out our demands and demonstrate our eagerness to resist!
While we the working class are heroically asserting our grievances on both fronts, the two parties are doing everything in their power to ignore or crush us. As nurses are struggling to save people’s lives, those in power are praising the thugs threatening the same nurses with their guns. As our family members show all symptoms of the deadly virus and we cannot afford taking them to hospital, both parties are rushing to bury the rightful demand for medicare for all. As we cry out for stopping all non-essential work with paid sick leave, our very rightful demand repeatedly falls on deaf ears in all states.
Fellow workers! It is high time for the working class to translate its spontaneous defense to its very own political platform. The time for begging for crumbles from the feast table of the bosses is way past. Both parties have demonstrated most overtly and brutally that they are on the side of the bosses. If we want to survive, we have to take matters into our own hands. So be it! With our spontaneous actions across the nation, we have demonstrated that we are capable of defending ourselves and our communities against all odds. But without our own mass political organization, we won’t be able to coordinate our struggle against the bosses organized in two parties.
There will be those who claim that the focus should be on the burning, daily life-death struggles, and no energy should be wasted on such long-term proposals. Without a political platform of their own, the workers will be left to hopelessly pressure either party from the left. We have the most burning needs, and therefore must push for our very concrete demands with no concessions whatsoever to the bosses and their representatives. Organizing a political party capable of reckoning with them is as essential as the day-to-day struggles that we have proven ourselves capable of conducting. Otherwise, we will keep begging for crumbles that do not even exist anymore in this time of scarcity and collapse. Capital has two parties – forward for a mass Labor Party!
You want a “political revolution”? Begin with a workers’ party NOW!
Both parties have demonstrated in the most horrendous way that they are servants to the bosses by abandoning the workers to their deaths.
The Republican administration has been busy with passing legislations to bail out big businesses and the stock market speculators, pushing all workers to go back to work by the end of April, and tolerating – if not organizing – right-wing militias pushing for the opening-up of the economy. They have been using their monopoly over the distribution of medical supplies to bring their political opponents in line by restricting their delivery to certain Blue states – they effectively sacrificed the population living in those states for their own political greed! Always appealing to “American workers” in his shamelessly deceitful speeches, Trump himself nonetheless personally pushed for the so-called “stimulus package” that handed out public money drained out of workers and public sources to giant corporations. What did the workers get in return? A one-time check not enough even to pay the rent and a few pennies for their hospitals!
The Democrats are not very different. Their new poster-boy Cuomo had no problem in ruling out any medical or financial aid for the undocumented residents of New York – a significant portion of the workforce in the state. While threatening the Trump administration with leaving the Union for failing to handle the pandemic efficiently, Governor Newsom of California has deafened his ears to the grievances of McDonald’s employees demanding sick leave.
In both 2016 and 2020, Sanders ran on the Democratic slate, claiming to represent the working class. In both campaigns, he abandoned the class he was claiming he represented and ran to the arms of the most overtly neoliberal Democrats (Clinton and Biden), while his supporters told the workers and the Left to wait for another four years. Since 2016, both the Left and workers’ struggles have grown tremendously, proclaiming the dawn of a new era in the history of struggles for the fight for justice in this country. Yet, in the context of today’s societal collapse, calls already rising for a “democratic-socialist” candidate four years from today are ridiculous. The workers in the context of today’s breakdown cannot wait for four months, let alone four years.
This pattern should tell us that pressuring the Democrats from the Left is a hollow strategy. They have not, and will not, allow for any voice of the working class among their ranks, especially in this moment of crisis. Their current spokesman Biden has allegedly moved towards the Left, with some variations on the theme of “Medicare for all” (with a much more restricted range of application than Sanders’s), but let us not be fooled by this move. Both parties’ histories are full of generous promises to the toilers of this country to deceive them and then shameless breaking of their own words when they got what they wanted. It won’t be different with Biden. The Democrats are a dead end – forward for a clean, independent slate! Forward for workers’ candidates in the elections on a workers’ program!
Sanders has often called for a “political revolution”, but he always avoided breaking with the two-party system. The political status quo of this country, which has protected the oppressors for so long, cannot be broken by relying on either party of the bosses. Let us allow ourselves to see this with utmost clarity. Let’s begin our political revolution by organizing our own democratic, worker-controlled mass party!
No hollow phrases! Organize around our burning needs! Workers’ lives matter!
Establishing the workers’ own political party is inseparable from the day-to-day struggles they are facing, and the Democrats or any other bosses’ party will not move a finger for them. Yet, if we are to make a difference in our political impact as we burst on the scene, we should begin from our very concrete, very burning, very urgent needs. The members of our class are on the fight to satisfy such needs across the country and the world! We therefore propose the following list of immediate demands based on their struggles:
*Reinstate all unionists and workers fired by the bosses for fighting against the callous treatment of workers in the face of the lethal threat posed by the Coronavirus pandemic!
*No bailout for corporations and banks! Nationalize without compensation all entities in default of their debt under workers’ control and immediately redirect their resources to invest in industries that cater to the needs of the fight against the virus!
*Stop privatization of all public services and education! People over profit!
*Nationalize all corporations in industries that can produce medical equipment, all pharmaceutical companies, and all banks so that resources can be mobilized under state control for the fight against the pandemic!
* Nationalize all private hospitals and healthcare institutions under worker and community control in order to mobilize their entire capacity and their healthcare workers for the fight against the pandemic!
* Our fight is against our bosses and the virus, not with our fellow workers abroad. Chop from the top! Eliminate the military expenditures and channel those resources for human needs, especially for healthcare, housing and food security! Life over profits!
*End all militarily and politically motivated sanctions, in particular on medications, medical equipment and foodstuffs! Cuba is sending doctors across the world to fight off the virus, blocking that effort is criminal!
*Expropriate all wealth in tax havens to use the resources internationally, with priority for the poor countries severely shaken by the pandemic!
*Health safety measures in all industries that are essential (factories, agriculture, transportation, shipping, retail etc.), including safe transportation to and from work, shorter shifts, four-day week, pay raises, additional personnel, less crowded work layout, protective gear, bearable hours, etc.!
*No layoffs, no short working hours with pay reduction, workers need their wages to live, let the capitalists pay the price!
*Stop corporate propaganda attacks on the working class by putting journalists in charge of the media! Defend all freedom of press! Free Julian Assange and all journalists imprisoned and repressed by the bosses’ government! Establish workers’ own media and communication portals! Stop spying and censorship on communication technologies!
*Not alms but a living unemployment pay for all workers regardless of race, nationality, or immigration status!
* End all racist slurs against people with Asian background or ancestry!
* African Americans were being killed in masses by the system even before pandemic. Fight racism on all fronts! Black lives matter!
* Provide amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status, and stop racist attacks on immigrants and Hispanic communities!
* Stop at once all sterilization experiments on peoples of color!
*Defend the rights of native peoples and their lands; stop the centuries-old genocide! Build hospitals and clinics on indigenous people’s land!
* Shut down all ICE detention centers that have turned into nests for Covid-19 to spread!
* Stop discrimination and terrorization of the LGBTQ communities!
* Cancel all student debt at once and unconditionally, stop the practice of bundling student debt with other loans!
*Cancel the foreign debt of poor countries, build an international fund for these countries to invest in healthcare, clean running water, adequate measures to fight against malnutrition;
*Dismantle the oppressive, colonial Fiscal Control Board over Puerto Rico, a major reason for the country’s inability to recover from recent disasters and, recognize the Puerto Rican people’s right of self-determination!
*Remove all privileges of pharmaceutical companies to make production of generic drugs a right for the poor countries!
*Provide free and properly sanitized shelters for all homeless with adequate physical distancing!
*Full unionization of the entire US working class and a mass jobs program paid for by a capital tax!
*No abuse of measures necessary to fight off Covid-19 to curtail any civil liberty!
*Most trade unions are currently structured as top-down, corporate organizations that accept the bosses’ rule and support US capitalism and imperialism. Fight the union bureaucracy! Democratic workers’ control over the unions that will put up true fights for workers’ rights! New, independent unions when necessary in the struggle for survival!
*General strike across the country!
No time for sectarianism! Forward for a workers’ united front!
Comrades! It is high time to unite for a mass labor party in the US! It is a political responsibility of all socialist or left organizations to unite for such a party. We can and shall have our disputes, discussions, and disagreements any time. The urgency of the moment demands that we work together to help forming the workers’ political party. In the course of our struggle we will reach clarification on many of these issues. As the virus is claiming lives and the bosses are plotting together to make things worse for the majority of the population, we cannot afford our internal – and serious – disputes get in the way of this vital effort. Forward for a mass, democratically controlled workers’ party!
Forward for the formation of “Committees for a Labor Party”!
Fellow workers! It is time for us to take matters into our own hands. Let’s fight together in coordination against the bosses’ literally murderous attempts! Let our united voice ring louder than both parties representing all bosses combined! Let’s start organizing for our own party entirely independent of those of bosses, and entirely under democratic workers’ control! We might have different experiences and points of view, which we shall discuss in our united struggles. However, the urgency of the moment requires us to unite around our class’s issues! The movement for a Labor Party as well is inseparable from our class demands!
The urgency of the moment is burning indeed – let that fuel our anger and enthusiasm! We need to start building our party now if we are to survive! So let us set up United Front Committees for a Labor Party wherever the moment finds us – in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in our unions, in our communities!
Forward for a workers’ party and workers’ government!