Support Striking Verizon Employees!

At midnight last night Verizon employees with the Communications Workers of America (CWA)and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)went on strike. The unions are in contract negotiations and at the 11th hour Verizon has refused to back off over 100 concessionary items. Find out more about the issues and how you can support the strike here.

Help Mobilize the SP for the One Nation Working Together March!

Comrades,

In the past the Party has asked members which type of fundraiser they are most
likely to support. The overwhelming response was for special fundraiser with
specific purposes and for specific issues/events. Over the last few months,
you’ve probably noticed we’re had more special fundraisers than in other
times, but on each occasion members came though.

In August we had a successful National Organizing Conference and were able to
get Cindy Sheehan there and most recently we were able to keep The Socialist
printed at a union shop after our old union printer went out of business. Now
we have one more reason to ask you for a contribution.

On October 2nd hundreds of thousands of activists will be mobilizing in
Washington DC for the “One National Working Together” march and rally at
the Lincoln Monument. The forces behind the march are mostly main-stream
pro-Democratic Party organizations and originally we did not consider this
event an action to focus on (especially since it’s just after the general
strike mobilization in Europe and just before mass-student walkouts in the US),
but recently there has been a general agreement by many left and socialist
organizations to make sure our faces and message is included and we’ll be
there.

This puts us in a bind and with a short window to organize a large SPUSA
contingent at the One National march. So here’s our plan and what your
support is needed for;
* a mailing announcing the event to many of our members in the area
* a new banner for the contingent
* lots of lit for the literature table
* white SPUSA t-shirts for all participants
* funds to cover last minute expenses

We think we can get this done. By the end of next week, we will have a website
with logistics and a RSVP form for the SPUSA contingent linked from our
homepage, but since we did not really budget for this, we need your help to
make sure we can get this done.

We REALLY need your financial support to make sure we can get banners, signs
and t-shirts to Washington, so please help us with a contribution. You can
contribute on-line at: http://socialistparty-usa.org/contribute.html
or send your contribution directly to the SPUSA at 339 Lafayette St. #303 NY,
NY 10012

If you are going- please RSVP from the link at:
http://socialistparty-usa.org/onenation102.html so we can be sure to give you
up-to-date info. There are free and low-cost buses from across the eastern part
of the US (and some from the West!) you can get this info off the march website
at: http://www.onenationworkingtogether.org/pages/transportation

Hope to hear from you soon and hope to see you in DC!

In Unity,

Greg Pason
National Secretary
Socialist Party USA

Solidarity with the Striking Workers in Europe and Student and Worker Walkouts in the US this September and October

Passed by the Socialist Party National Action Committee, August 31, 2010

Since May of this year, workers in Greece, Italy, France and Spain have organized increasingly large strikes. In Europe, just as in the United States, workers are confronted with budget cuts, union-busting, and labor law ‘reforms’ that favor the rich. In Spain, labor unions are organizing a general strike on September 29th to coincide with a meeting of European finance ministers on September 29 in Brussels. It is expected that militant actions in other countries will also take place on this day.

Workers’ organizations and individuals in Europe have been calling others to help build September 29 into a day that will begin to awaken a response by global workers to austerity and attacks on our rights.

In the United States students and workers have called for a repeat of last year's mass actions and students walk-outs. On October 2nd and 7th actions are being called to stop budget cuts and other regressive measures which balance budgets on the backs of students, the poor and union workers.

We stand with the European workers and our fellow workers and students in the United States, raising our fists in defiance this September and October.

As socialists, we must reject the latest onslaught of neo-liberal attacks on students’ and workers’ rights, working conditions, social services for our youth, the elderly, and people living with disabilities.

Inasmuch as we call on the US and European governments to immediately halt austerity plans that are killing our people, we also remind our sisters and brothers in the movement that we cannot settle for reforms – we must reject capitalism as a whole. Just as globalization has opened borders to exploitation, we must stand united for the transformation of our societies from the rule of the wealthy few to the radically democratic governance of the collective wealth of the many.

Together we recognize that our politics and our approaches to this mass strike ought to reflect the open, transparent and democratic qualities that are prerequisites for genuine socialist democracy. It is necessary to show unity in action as well as theoretical, tactical, and political distinction from reformist parties and labor union bureaucracies.

With one voice, American and European workers, students and all oppressed by the capitalist system must rise up and demand an end to the war on workers, an end to the imperialist occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq; and an end to capitalism’s war on humanity, thus giving substance to the words: Workers of the world, unite!

This Labor Day, Workers Face Weak Economy on All Fronts - Working In These Times

This Labor Day, Workers Face Weak Economy on All Fronts - Working In These Times

Please help the SP magazine keep a union printer!

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I write to you today to ask for your support in our effort to continue printing The Socialist magazine at a unionized printer. Our long-time printer, Saltus Press, shut down unexpectedly last week just as the magazine was about to go to press. We have scrambled to find another union printer and after a flurry of calls finally found one that could match our print specifications. However, the cost will be $200 more than our deal with Saltus.

Once we get the latest issue out, we will conduct a more thorough search for a union printer that fits our budget. Your contribution will help us keep the magazine going while we look.

As socialists, we support unionized workplaces. Larger than that, we are often the folks who initiate union drives or wake sleepy bureaucratic unions from their slumber through rank-and-file action. We need to keep the Socialist at a union printer and need your help to do so.

The Editorial Board of the Socialist Party USA and the Editor of the Socialist ask that you please consider making a generous contribution to our emergency printer fund. Times are tough for all of us, but socialists have bedrock principles. Supporting union labor is one of them.

Please donate online via a credit card or PayPal:
http://socialistparty-usa.org/contribute.html

Or send a check or money order (mark Emergency Printer Fund in the memo) to:
Greg Pason
Socialist Party USA
339 Lafayette Street, Room 303
New York City, NY 10012

Thank you in advance for your support and keep up the struggle!

In Solidarity,

James Marra
Convener, Editorial Board SP-USA

Billy Wharton
Editor, The Socialist

SPUSA May Day Statement

Socialist Party May Day Statement

Socialism – An Idea Whose Time Has Come!
“Ideas,” someone once wrote, “move rapidly when their time comes.” As we gather to celebrate May Day, the continuing capitalist crisis makes socialism an idea ready to move rapidly. While the banks have received trillion dollar bailouts, working people still face mass unemployment, state and local budget cuts and deepening personal debt. Capitalist crisis has made the socialist vision of a world where human needs are put ahead of individual profits even more relevant. Our task on May Day is to convert socialism from a good idea into a movement to transform our society.

Capitalism Exposed
The recent economic crisis was more than a banking crisis or a housing price bubble. It was a demonstration that there is a fundamental problem at the center of capitalism. That problem lies in the nature of corporations themselves. Noam Chomsky once described corporations as “unaccountable private tyrannies.” There is no democracy inside of a corporation and, as a result, there is no democracy on our worksites. Corporations are undemocratic entities created only to make profits from exploiting the labor of workers.
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The undemocratic corporate model now also dominates American politics. A corrupting system of campaign donations and lobbying ensures that both Democrats and Republicans serve the interests of corporate America. When corporate profits declined, politicians began handing out trillions of dollars in public money to them. When these same corporations fired millions of workers, neither Democrat nor Republican attempted to stop them.

Socialist Solutions
Socialism offers an alternative to undemocratic profit-mad capitalism. By ensuring that people’s needs for housing, healthcare, education and employment are guaranteed, a socialist society will offer equality of opportunity. By bringing democracy to the economy through worker’s control of production, we will make sure that the place where most people spend their adult lives operates democratically. By organizing participatory budgeting, we will put people at the center of the system – fully empowered to make decisions concerning the future of the society they live in.
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The powerful necessity of socialist ideas can be seen most clearly with the issue of immigration. The capitalist state presents restrictions and police actions as the proper way to keep immigrants in line. Conversely, socialists support the rights of all workers regardless of their status. We support the creation of an unconditional amnesty program and seek to build solidarity amongst workers throughout the world. Where capitalism offers ICE raids and the Border police, we support human freedom and social solidarity

May Day- Our Day
May Day is our day. A day when trade unionists, anarchists and socialists gather to state clearly that another world is possible. This other world is a democratic participatory one, where resources are shared for the betterment of humanity. However, democratic socialism will not come about spontaneously – we must get organized. So, today we invoke the names of Eugene Debs, of Caesar Chavez, of Dr. Martin Luther King to call on all working people to join the struggle for socialism. Move rapidly, act boldly, we have a world to win!

Visit the SPUSA May Day 2010 Page

Massey Mine Tragedy: Capitalism vs. Labor

The death of 29 miners in the Massey Energy Company's Upper Big Branch mine last week was not an accident, it was the result of a deliberate attempt by a corporation to sacrifice mine safegy, and the lives of mine workers, to make a profit. It is the latest in a long history of capitalism sacrificing the safety and lives of workers for corporate profit.

Despite a supposedly tougher federal law that passed in 2006 after the Sago, W. Va. mine explosion killed a dozen miners, Massey and other companies have been able to use the law as a shield to avoid tougher enforcement measures by appealing safety citations — and overwhelming the weak Mine Safety and Health Administration with a backlog of appeals.
Even though Massey has faced proposed fines nearing $2 million since 2005 and been cited over 1,300 times, it’s paid only a fraction — one-sixth — of the proposed fines. All told, according to the United Mine Workers of America, nearly 50 people have been killed at Massey mines in the last 10 years. In March alone, it was cited over 50 times for violations, many directly related to ventilation violations that allowed the build-up of explosive methane gas that played a major role in the killing of the 29 miners.

Lesson from Mine Tragedy: Union Busting = Death

Massey CEO Don Blankenship Fought Regulators
As CEO, "he has fought with mine regulators, unions, residents of his town and even his personal maid.
His company regularly appeals fines for safety infractions. He has personally gone into mines to persuade workers to abandon union organizing efforts. Massey is fighting lawsuits that claim it contaminated groundwater in Blankenship’s town. A maid supplied by a company she claimed was a Massey unit was forced to fight all the way to West Virginia’s highest court to collect unemployment benefits."

Blankenship was also a Teabagger, speaking out at Tea Party protests against government regulations, global warming, etc. Like other corporate backers of the Tea Party movement, Blankenship sounded like a working class populist railing against "big" government and unions, but he was actually an enemy of labor and the American working class.

Here is the union-busting Massey CEO Don Blakenship speaking at a Tea Party celebration of "American Labor":



It is a perfect example of how corporations are using the TEA PARTY movement to protect their own profits and financial interests over the well-being of the American working class.

In These Times: Will Massey Corp. Ever Face Justice?

Tax Day April 15: Tax Wall Street

Wall Street got its bailout--now it's time to bail out the American working class!

April 15: Tax Wall Street Day of Action

AFLCIO: March on Wall Street Planned As Unions Try to Out-Tea Party the Tea Party

Labor Plans March on Wall Street

Thought for April 15: More than 53% of Your Tax Payment Goes to the Military

The Great Recession (Depression?)

The signs of what is ahead for the U.S. working class continue to spell big trouble. More people are out of work and unemployed for longer than any other recession since the Great Depression. Millions of jobs are permanently gone, creating a "new" working class poor population. The condition of American workers is the worse it has been since the Great Depression. That word keeps popping up--DEPRESSION.

NYT: The New Poor--Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs

Fed Official Warns: Jobs will be Scarce--New Paradigm Shift

Socialists call this a class struggle!

The Economic Elite Vs. People of the USA

The Richest 1% Have Captured America's Wealth, What is it going to take to get it back?
The U.S. already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis -- and it's gotten even worse.

Obama and the State of the Democrats