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Jeff Mackler for U.S.
Senate
The
Jeff Mackler for Senate campaign is under way! And while this page is still under major constructions, we
urge you to read what we have up so far, and to contact the campaign to
volunteer and help us spread the message of hope for working people!
An Interview
With Jeff Mackler:
‘A Fighting
Socialist Campaign!’
by Rebecca Doran
and Mark Ostapiak
 
Socialist
Action's Twelfth National Convention, July 14-16, voted to launch a campaign
for the U.S. Senate seat in California. The delegates voted to run
Socialist Action National Secretary Jeff Mackler against Democrat Dianne
Feinstein, Republican Richard Mountjoy, and Green Party candidate Todd
Chretien.
Mackler,
66, is a veteran fighter against U.S. imperialist war and intervention. He
has been an activist from the time of the U.S.-backed invasion of
revolutionary Cuba, in 1961, when he headed a chapter of the Fair Play for
Cuba Committee.
During
the Vietnam War, he served on the National Committee of the National Peace
Action Coalition (NPAC). In conjunction with the heroic struggle of the
Vietnamese people and the mass opposition to the war inside the U.S.
military, NPAC was a major component of the broad antiwar movement that forced
the U.S. out of Vietnam, a historic setback to American imperial war aims.
In
the 1980s, Mackler was a founder and central organizer of the Northern
California-based Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice, a united-front
coalition that consistently mobilized tens of thousands against U.S.
intervention in Central America during the period of the Nicaraguan,
Salvadoran, and Grenadian revolutions. Mackler visited Grenada and
Nicaragua during that time to meet with leaders of these revolutionary struggles,
including Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and Nicaraguan President
Daniel Ortega.
In
1991, during the first Gulf War, when the U.S. slaughtered a quarter of a
million Iraqis in a matter of weeks, Mackler worked to initiate two
national antiwar conferences and chaired the Jan. 26 San Francisco antiwar
protest of over 200,000. Similarly, in 2003, with the bombing and invasion
of Iraq, Mackler worked to help initiate and co-chaired the San Francisco
protest rally of close to 300,000.
"War
and intervention, overt and covert, are fundamental to U.S. policy,"
said Mackler in a July interview with us. "Yesterday it was Vietnam,
Cuba, Congo, Central America, Chile, Somalia, Iran, and Iraq. Today, the
U.S. war machine focuses on Iraq again and the Middle East in
general—aiding, abetting, and financing the Zionist slaughter in Palestine
and Lebanon and making threats against Iran—while occupying Afghanistan and
threatening intervention in Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia."
"War
is an inherent part of capitalism," Mackler explained, "and the
ultimate solution to the internal contradictions of the profit-driven and
competition-driven system. The U.S. military-industrial complex is
organized and designed to maximize profit rates for the corporate few and
to serve the imperial economic and political interests of the war-making
class—regardless of the capitalist party in power.
“Socialists
acknowledge our fundamental obligation to challenge the U.S. war-makers and
their twin parties and to defend the rights and struggles of all those who
resist imperialist domination and oppression.”
The worldwide
crisis of capitalism
"All
of the evils of capitalism that the vast majority have come to abhor,"
Mackler continued, "from racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, unemployment,
environmental destruction, and deterioration of social services and public
education to abrogation of basic civil liberties and the dismemberment of
the historic gains of working people on the job are necessary for
capitalism's existence.”
Today
the capitalist system is in a crisis, with each of the major industrialized
nations and their competing regional trading blocs geared up as never
before to win the mad race for declining markets and resources at the
expense of the world's working masses. At a time when the technology and
resources exist to build an environmentally sound world of plenty for
everyone, the system is becoming unglued. Union pensions and health-care
plans, as well as jobs that were taken for granted for decades, are
eliminated by means of fake bankruptcy filings by the corporations.
Whole
continents stand in ruin, with a third of the world living on less than $2
per day. Tens of thousands die of starvation daily in nations whose
resources are looted by the U.S. and other neo-colonial exploiter nations.
Dianne Feinstein’s
sordid record
Mackler's
central opponent in the U.S. Senate race is Dianne Feinstein.
"Feinstein, said Mackler, "is the classic California liberal Democrat.
Her rap sheet is designed to demonstrate her ‘progressive’ record. She gets
good marks from the AFL-CIO, the National Abortion Rights Action League,
Peace Action (formerly Sane/ Freeze) and from other liberal groups
whose political orientation is to Democratic Party lesser-evilism.
"And
yet Feinstein has supported every U.S. war conducted by every
administration since she entered the Senate in 1992" Mackler pointed
out. "Today, she leads the bipartisan congressional chorus cheering on
Israel’s bombing and occupation of Lebanon and its renewed occupation,
subjugation, and starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
"My
opponent supported the fake ‘drug war’ in Colombia, in reality a move to
refurbish and instruct the Colombian government's army and death squads as
they seek to crush the national liberation struggle in that country.
Feinstein supported the allocation of billions for the so-called National
Missile Defense System and nearly every other boondoggle to transfer
working people's money to the military.”
“Feinstein,
at $50 million in net worth,” Mackler asserted, “is the fifth richest
person in Congress, yet she voted to eliminate the Estate Tax, a measure
that was designed to make the rich even richer.
“Feinstein
voted for one of the most draconian pieces of anti-civil-liberties
legislation ever, the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,
which President Clinton signed into law. This law, which will send
hundreds, if not thousands more, to the nation's execution chambers,
essentially scrapped critical due process rights guaranteed in the U.S.
Constitution.”
”Hardly
a superstar on civil liberties," Mackler continued, “Feinstein sought
to scrap the First Amendment's free-speech provisions by supporting a
constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. In the name of
‘fighting terrorism,’ she joined the congressional stampede to enact and
renew the reactionary Patriot Act, and more recently backed legislation to
increase government spy agencies’ ‘rights’ to tap cell phones.”
“My
opponent is an ardent defender of the predatory capitalist system and its
two-party shell game," said Mackler. “Her voting record and public
statements, liberal or conservative, right or 'left,' are subordinate to
this determining reality.”
“Reforming
capitalism,” Mackler pointed out, “that is, efforts to transform it to a
'kindler and gentler' system of exploitation and minority rule by electing
the least offensive of the millionaire and billionaire candidates the
ruling rich periodically offer us during the election season, is both a
utopian fantasy and a fundamental impediment to principled working-class
politics.”
”Socialists
fight for all progressive reforms, to be sure,” said Mackler. “We actively
participate in and support all who fight for a better world on every front.
Whenever working people independently organize to advance their own
interests—in mass mobilizations in the streets, in trade-union struggles,
on picket lines, and at public meetings and rallies—we are part of the
struggle. But we have no illusions in the nature of the beast.
In
the capitalist electoral arena there are no real choices. While socialists
participate in elections to advance their political critique of the
capitalist system and to build the mass movements that inevitably arise to
challenge many of the evils generated by the system, we reject any
support—directly or indirectly—to the candidates and parties of the rich.
We don't play the ‘lesser evil’ game.”
Todd Chretien’s
“Perfect Storm”
"Green
Party politics," Mackler noted, "including it's current
California expression in Todd Chretien’s U.S. Senate campaign against
Democrat Feinstein, is simply the latest version of lesser-evil politics."
Mackler
then quoted from a Nov. 19, 2005, article by Chretien, who is also a public
spokesperson for the International Socialist organization (ISO).
Chretien
had written: “The Senate race, with its diminished spoiler issue because of
the huge lead pro-war Dianne Feinstein will have over her pro-war
Republican opponent, likely to be more than 20%, opens the door for a
larger vote for a pro-peace candidate than ever before."
Todd
Chretien’s “Perfect Storm” article, said Mackler, “was centered on the
proposition that superhawk Feinstein has a supposedly insurmountable lead of
20-plus percentage points over the virtually unknown and semi-retired
Republican Party candidate Richard Mountjoy, a faithful ‘slot filler’ in a
race that has been virtually conceded.
“Chretien’s
conclusion? It's safe for even 10 percent or a ‘million people’ to vote for
him and the Greens in 2006 without significantly harming Feinstein’s
re-election chances.”
According
to Mackler, Chretien then offered some “practical” advice to his Green
supporters by stating: "Of course, if a close race develops for
governor [in which Green Party candidate Peter Camejo opposes Arnold
Schwrzenegger], many progressives may choose to split their ballot by
voting against Arnold and for the Democrat, but voting for the Green Party
against Feinstein."
Green
Party politics are based on middle-class reformism, the notion that the
capitalist parties, especially the Democrats, can generally pressured to do
the right thing. In the 2004 elections Green Party presidential candidate
David Cobb essentially told his supporters to "Vote
Democrat"—that is, John Kerry—in all states where the polls indicated
that the race was close.
In
most states the Green Party practices a version of “inside/outside” or
lesser-evil politics, wherein their candidates run in “safe districts” but step
down in races where conservative Republicans face so-called liberal
Democrats. “It is a sad day,” said Mackler, when socialists, like Chretien
and the ISO, fall into the same ‘lesser-evil’ trap.”
A campaign for
social justice
Jeff
Mackler's U.S. Senate campaign is aimed at providing a serious political
alternative to the twin U.S. parties of war, racism, poverty, and
environmental catastrophe. "The Democrats and Republicans, no matter
who their candidates or what their campaign promises," said Mackler,
"are nothing less than the direct representatives of capital, of the
ruling rich, who require death and destruction to protect their interests."
Socialist
Action's campaign is aimed at today's new fighters against injustice, at
the youth who have learned from experience that their prospects are bleak
in the capitalist framework. It is aimed at working people who want to
revitalize and democratize the trade-union movement and expand union power
to the 90 percent who are without unions. It is aimed at fostering the
construction of a class-struggle left wing in the unions, a militant
fightback current that will seek to organize the majority to fight in the
political and economic arenas to challenge the boss's parties on every
front.
The
Socialist Action campaign is directed to the immigrant workers of every
nationality and their families, who courageously demonstrated on May Day
that real power lies in the streets, in independent organization, and in
solidarity—the prerequisite to reversing the boss's drive for cheap and
defenseless immigrant labor and the deepened exploitation of the working
class in general.
Our
socialist campaign is aimed at the Black and Latino masses, who are always
the first victims of any downturn, "the last hired and the first fired,"
at the dispossessed and shunned Katrina victims, and the victims of school
re-segregation and calculated decay in public education and the gutting of
bilingual education.
It
is a campaign for women who fight for the right to abortion and equality,
and for gays and lesbians who seek to exercise the democratic right to
marriage—in short, for all people who desire a new world where human needs
come first and capitalist exploitation and oppression are relegated to the
insane oddities of history.
“We
will challenge all who seek social and economic justice to unite in mass
actions and democratic coalitions against all U.S. wars and against every
attack on working people,” said Mackler. ”Only working people, including
their allies among the oppressed everywhere, have the power to reverse the
present descent to barbarism and to build a new world.”
In
1999 Jeff Mackler was co-coordinator of the first major national conference
on the Cuban Revolution. Sponsored by the University of California at
Berkeley and attended by 2000 people, including 30 Cubans who were
specialists in as many fields, the Dialogue with Cuba Conference provided a
format for the Cuban people to demonstrate the superiority of a state
system based on workers and farmers that had abolished the profit system
and private property in the means of production.
“The
groundbreaking gains of the Cuban Revolution in health care, education, and
human solidarity,” said Mackler, “are a model for the entire world.”
Mackler
plans to devote a significant portion of his campaign to defending Cuba
against the constant threats by the U.S. to invade. “Our campaign condemns
the illegal and barbaric U.S. embargo of Cuba. We stand in solidarity with
the Cuban Five, the heroic Cuban patriots illegally jailed by the U.S., who
demonstrated for all to see that the real source of terrorism in the world
today is the government of the United States.”
The
Socialist Action 2006 Campaign will champion the fight for freedom of Mumia
Abu-Jamal, perhaps the world's most well-known victim of the racist
frame-up operation that passes for the U.S. criminal “justice” system.
Mackler will also campaign for Lynne Stewart, the New York progressive
attorney who was convicted on "conspiracy" charges in a frame-up
trial that ran roughshod over Stewart's basic constitution and democratic
rights.
Mackler
has been co-coordinator of the Northern California-based Mobilization to
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal for the past 10 years. He also serves as the West
Coast coordinator of the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.
The
Socialist Action campaign will fight for the political independence of all
progressive social movements. It will challenge the myth that the
Democrats, the graveyard of all social movements, are a lesser evil to the
Republicans. To the reformist credo, "Anybody But Bush," we
answer, "No to the twin parties of war and oppression!" and
"Yes to the independent organization and mobilization of working
people!"
Join
the 2006 Socialist Action California Campaign! Call: (415) 255-1080, or
e-mail: macklerforsenate@yahoo.com.
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