By Freedom Road Socialist Organization
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As things stand, billionaire and bigot Donald Trump will be the Republican standard bearer for the presidency. In many ways he is a symbol of everything that is wrong with this country. He is a tireless promoter of racist anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim attacks. He is a misogynist, who defends the oppression of women. Trump spreads the gospel of ‘greed is good’ while pretending to be a friend of the working person. He is a right-wing populist with only one redeeming feature – that, barring some big change, he is unelectable.
While Trump is an unabashed advocate of capitalism and greed, many of the rich and powerful are nervous about handing him the keys to the White House. They see him as erratic and unfit to run the empire they have built. As for the people of this country, most reject Trump’s reactionary agenda.
Hillary Clinton is a known quantity; she is a faithful servant of Wall Street and a war criminal to boot. An enemy of low-income women, she backed welfare ‘reform’ which plunged millions into deeper poverty. Why do big bankers and financiers host her speaking events and pay her big sums of money? Clinton tells them what they want to hear. From the coup in Honduras to the U.S./NATO attack on Libya – she is a candidate with a track record of leaving a trail of blood in her wake.
If anything shows the bankruptcy of the money-dominated two-party system, it is the presumed candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties – Trump and Clinton. Monopoly capitalism is an exploitive, failed and dying system, whose principal political representatives are worthy of the Jerry Springer show. Both are apologists for police crimes and terror. They have no claim to our respect and support. This is not a call to boycott elections. The point is this: the unelectable Trump is an insufficient reason to organize support for Clinton.
The outpouring of support for Bernie Sanders represented a rejection of the way things are and a yearning for something better. There is a profound dissatisfaction in this country with the billionaires, Wall Street and capitalism. Millions of people are attracted to the idea of socialism. There is the potential for this broad, progressive political current to contribute to a growing struggle against the ruling elite.
Things in the country have changed. Everywhere people are in motion. Every major city, and many of the small ones, have been rocked by protests against police crimes. This country is a prison house for the oppressed – Africans Americans, Chicanos and Latinos, Asians Americans and Native peoples. The spark has been struck and the fight is on for equality and liberation.
When the students of Chicago shut down Trump, they signaled the way forward. Every city the bigot Trump shows his face in, he should be shut down. We are building a movement against everything he stands for.
In the months ahead it is vital that the people’s movements are in the streets, advancing our demands. The billionaires have bought and paid for politicians from the two parties to represent their interests. We need to fight for our own.
The epidemic of police terror, rampant inequality, attacks on our standard of living, and endless wars serve as indictment of a system that is guilty as hell. We can do better than this. A country where things are radically wrong cries out for a revolutionary solution. We need to end the rule of the wealthy, to break the grip of the billionaires. It is not going to happen tomorrow – but in the long run we get what we fight for. Working and oppressed people need the political power and control of the economy to remake society in our interests. Capitalism must go and socialism will set us free.
