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With the U.S. war machine and its heavily
armed client regime in Israel center stage in the political arena, Jeff
Mackler, Socialist Action write-in candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in
California, addressed a crowd of 5000 at the Aug. 12 antiwar rally in San
Francisco’s Civic Center.
Mackler’s political platform
resonated with the crowd (a significant number of whom were Arab and
Muslim), especially his opposition to the Israeli collective punishment
on Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Mackler’s presentation was a
vivid contrast to the posturing of his main political opponent,
multimillionaire Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who led a small rally in San
Francisco on July 23 expressing solidarity with Israel in its offensive
against Lebanon and its occupation of Gaza.
Speaking at the pro-Israel rally,
Feinstein said, "Let there be no doubt Israel was subjected to
unprovoked, unjustified attacks from terrorists on both the northern and
southern borders,” referring to Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively.
“Who started the present wars
in the Middle East?” asked Mackler at the Aug. 12 rally. “We are told
that it was a handful of Palestinians who captured one or two Israeli
soldiers or the Lebanese so-called terrorists who fired some primitive
rockets into Israel.
“But we are not told that
Israel holds 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners in its jails and
torture chambers. We are not told that so-called democratic Israel
refuses to recognize the Hamas election victory, affirmed by virtually
every nation on earth.
“We are not told that racist
Israel daily seeks to starve to death an entire people in the Gaza strip,
that it cuts off its sole supply of water, and that the West Bank is
walled off like the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto who were then slaughtered
by Hitler’s butchers.
“Indeed, we are not told that
Israel is a Zionist, racist, colonial settler state created by force and
violence out of the original Palestine that had been home to its peoples
for 2000 years.
Perhaps if the American
people were told just a few of these facts they could understand why
virtually all the peoples of the Middle East stood in solidarity with the
actions of the Hezbollah fighters who chose to not step aside while their
Palestinian brothers and sisters were subjected to the full wrath of the
Israeli terror operation.
“The only secure future of
the Jewish people will be in the creation of a democratic and secular
Palestine, where Arabs and Jews can live together as equals. And this new
society can only be based on the unconditional right of return of all
Palestinians who were dispossessed of their land, homes, farms, and
nation.
“At the same time, socialists
fight to win the masses of the region to the struggle for socialist
revolution, indeed, to the goal of a socialist federation of the entire
Middle East.”
Campaign activists hit the streets
Many in the crowd during
Mackler’s Aug. 12 speech were eager to snap up the Socialist Action
campaign literature. Throughout the day, campaigners spoke with hundreds
of people about the Mackler campaign and signed up 17 volunteers—while
registering voters to the Socialist Action Party.
The following weekend,
campaign workers went into the working-class and heavily Latino Mission
District of San Francisco, where Mackler addressed people, soap-box
style, in the streets.
On Aug. 17, Mackler spoke to
a public meeting of over 50 people sponsored by the Social Justice
Committee of the Fellowship of Unitarians and Universalists Church in
Berkeley about the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the innocent Black journalist
sitting on Pennsylvania's death row.
"Mumia's case is the
final stages of the legal battle," said Mackler. "Pennsylvania
officials have sought resolutions demanding Mumia's death from both the
Philadelphia City Council and the state legislature.
“Two Philadelphia-based
legislators have introduced similar resolutions before the U.S. Congress.
The idea is to create an atmosphere in which Mumia's execution would be
seen as a plausible result of the litigation process. Our job is to do
the opposite—to build a massive movement that will make the price of
Mumia's execution or continued incarceration too high for the system to
pay.”
For the past 10 years Mackler
has been on the leading edge of the struggle to free Mumia. A number at
the Berkeley meeting volunteered to help with Mackler's run against
Feinstein.
On Sept. 4, Labor Day, campaign activists
attended a San Francisco march for immigrants’ rights and signed up a
dozen new volunteers to help get out the vote for Mackler.
On Sept. 9, Jeff Mackler was
one of the featured speakers at the annual Power to the Peaceful
festival, organized by musician and activist Mich-ael Franti in San
Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The socialist candidate received a highly
favorable response from the crowd of 40,000.
Global warming
emergency
Speaking on Aug. 24 at the
Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Dianne Feinstein unveiled her plan to
cut greenhouse gas emissions, which would require power plants and major
emitters of greenhouse gases to either cap emissions or obtain credit
from other companies that have lowered their emissions below target
levels. The program would also require that—10 years from now—cars be
engineered to get at least 35 miles per gallon and that utilities meet a
portion of energy demand with clean energy sources like wind and solar.
Commenting on the speech,
Mackler stated: “Dianne Feinstein's band-aid proposals fail to fully
address the looming catastrophe associated with global warming, and can
only be explained by her party's subordination of human life itself to
corporate profits.
“Contrary to Feinstein, we
don't advocate a 10-year tweaking plan to slightly increase the fuel
efficiency of gas guzzlers and a trading of energy credits from so-called
good-guy corporations to bad-guy polluters.
“We need a fundamental
transformation of the entire automobile industry—which would retain its
current workers and hire back all those who have already been laid off.
That could be done by spreading out the available jobs through a cut in
the workweek—that is, 30 hours of work for 40 hours pay—at top-notch
union wages.
“Feinstein said nothing at
all about mass transportation. But we say, retool the factories to build
a world-class system of energy-efficient, free, and accessible public
transportation. That would both make a real dent in the number of
polluting vehicles on the road and be a gain, not a loss, for the
autoworkers.
“Feinstein's corporate
polluter friends—and those in the military-industrial complex—don't need
deals to buy the right to kill; they need to be punished for their crimes
and taxed to the tune of 100 percent of their profits until they act on
the proposition that human life comes first.
“If the trillions spent on
war were spent on the rapid development of safe and renewable energy
sources today, the horrific predictions of scientists could be replaced
with a bright and optimistic view, where generations to come will
flourish in harmony with nature's bounty. I fight for a socialist future
where human needs are first and foremost.”
Speaking with military
veterans
On Aug. 23, Mackler joined
Carl Webb, an Iraq War resister and victim of the economic draft, on
KPFA's “Flashpoints” radio program with Dennis Bernstein. Webb explained
how this war is not in the interests of the soldiers who fight and die,
99 percent of whom are working-class and poor youth.
Mackler lent his support to
the antiwar sentiment and resistance of soldiers like Carl and added that
his campaign is for "Bring the Troops Home Now!"
In addition to the radio
interview, the campaign committee organized a public forum on Aug. 26
with Mackler, featuring both Webb and Paul Cox. Cox is a Bay Area antiwar
activist who served in the Vietnam War, during which he worked
underground helping to publish Rage, an antiwar magazine for GIs.
In the final weeks before the
election, Socialist Action campaign supporters plan a full schedule of
activities. A highlight will be a debate between three California
candidates for U.S. Senate: Jeff Mackler, Todd Chretien of the Green
Party, and Marsha Feinland of the Peace and Freedom Party. The
debate—scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 10—will take place at the Socialist
Action Bookstore in San Francisco; call (415) 255-1080 for information.
In late September, Mackler
will embark on an East Coast speaking tour. He will be in Philadelphia,
Sept. 22-23; New York, Sept. 25-26 and Sept. 29; Hartford, Conn., Sept.
27-28; and St. Petersburg, Tampa, and Dade City, Fla., Sept. 30-Oct. 1.
For information on Mackler’s
speaking events, see the campaign website at www.socialistaction.org/macklerforsenate.htm Or send an e-mail
to: macklerforsenate@yahoo.com
Noted civil liberties
fighters endorse the Mackler for Senate campaign
Among the endorsers* of Jeff
Mackler's campaign for the U.S. Senate are some of the country’s leading
social and political activists.
• In early September,
campaign director Mark Ostapiak announced that Michael Ratner, the
president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, had given his
endorsement.
Ratner's civil liberties defense
organization won an historic victory against the U.S. government in the
case of Rasul v. Bush, wherein the U.S. Supreme Court rejected U.S.
government arguments and ruled that Guantanamo detainees were entitled to
the due process rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.
• Civil rights and human
rights attorney Leonard Weinglass has also endorsed.
Weinglass is the attorney for the
imprisoned Cuban heroes known as the Cuban Five. The Five were victims of
an infamous U.S. frame-up trial in Miami. The case of the Cuban Five
exposed the U.S. role in aiding and abetting terrorist actions against
Cuba. Weinglass is currently heading up the appeal.
• Lynne Stewart, the
prominent human rights attorney who faces a 30-year prison sentence
stemming from her frame-up trial and conviction on charges of aiding and
abetting terrorism, has also endorsed Mackler's campaign effort.
• Michael Steven Smith, an
author, editor, and attorney, has also endorsed Mackler's campaign.
Smith is the co-host of the New York-based
WBAI Pacifica radio program "Law and Disorder," a member of the
board of directors of the Brecht Forum, and the author/ editor of
"Che Guevara and the FBI."
• Robert Meeropol has also
added his name to Mackler's Senate campaign effort.
Meeropol is the son of Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, victims of the McCarthy-era witch-hunt period who were
executed on trumped-up charges of conspiring to give the Soviet Union the
"secret" of the atomic bomb. Meeropol is executive director of
the Rosenberg Fund for Children, an organization dedicated to aiding
children whose parents are victims of unjust government persecution
because of their support to the cause of social justice and human freedom.
• Also joining the list of
endorsers is Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers
Guild.
*Organizations listed
for identification only.
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