Help Us Circulate These Statements and Make a Stand Today
BLACK LIVES MATTER IN THE COURTS
Statement by Socialists CAN- June 1, 2020
Within recent months, the nation and the world has witnessed the brutal killing of two Black men that has sparked rage across America and the world. Both murders caught on camera, Ahmaud Arbery was stalked by three white men in Brunswick, Georgia and was killed by a former cop and his son, Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael, while the video and killing was being recorded by a third suspect recording the horrific event. The second murder was also caught on camera in Minneapolis, Minnesota; George Floyd was in police custody, not resisting arrest and while in handcuffs, police officer Derek Chauvin used his knee to apply deadly pressure to the side of the neck of George Floyd until he was rendered unconscious, and within minutes he died from this use of deadly force.
These are only two of the hundreds of deadly encounters that Black men, Black women, boys and girls fall victim to individuals connected to law enforcement. Our system of injustice often allows these killer cops to murder without punishment. Black victims and their families are often denied justice because they are protected by a system where the jurors are all white or mostly white. Even the cases that make it to the courts, most of these cases result in dismissals or not guilty verdicts.
Black Lives Matter and Black lives must be protected in the home, on the streets and in the criminal justice system. The abuses within the criminal justice system toward Blacks and other minorities is systemic; however, moving forward, there is an urgent need for better policing; hiring requirements for police, periodic background checks and training. There is also a greater need for community oversight for police department across the nation.
Socialists CAN is calling on state and federal legislators to enact laws that will require prosecutors, judges and the courts to select jurors that will not prejudice Blacks, defendants or victims, to unfair trials due to racial bias. To this end, juror selection for Blacks, involving criminal charges should require that the makeup of the jury should be no less than 50% Black; those selected to serve as jurors.
To protect the civil rights of Blacks, across the nation, Socialists CAN urge legislators to act on bringing about legislation that will protect millions of innocent Blacks individuals, that are constantly threaten in their communities, by those that are supposed to be there to protect and serve; instead their civil right are constantly being violated.
Socialists Connection Action Network
The Election 2020 Fix Is In- The Left Must Build Outside of The Democratic Party
Statement Issued March 2020
It seems the fix is pretty much in; the fix will be complete when Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders endorse Joe Biden as planned, as they surely will, and Wall Street will have had its way once again with Trump getting a second term.
The fascist noose will be tightened around our necks as Wall Street tries to fend off an angry people. This has been Wall Street’s plan all along.
Wall Street has been aware that it’s capitalist system is failing and things are going to be getting very bad for the majority of the working people, most of whom have been content trying to squeeze by, making ends meet from pay-check to pay-check; but now as the economy is about to collapse completely, Wall Street understands that it needs complete control over everything and everyone.
These dirty imperialist wars have finally done the system in and these fools at the helm of government, led by Trump, Pence, Pompeo and the likes of fascists like Steve Bannon and John Bolton, who thought using biological warfare-coronavirus against China, without having the disease come back to haunt them on our own shores, have now created a problem they had not expected to have to deal with; also, misery for the American people, too many of whom will have been made medically economically impoverished, even if they survive this at a time when the economy is collapsing.
Unfortunately, most people’s thinking doesn’t change, not until they have something major happen to disrupt their lives; and there is massive disruption for millions of people’s lives coming shortly.
On top of all of this, the pension funds and 401K’s are going up in smoke and this brilliant U.S. President, that Wall Street has deemed worthy of a second term is now planning to gut Social Security through this brilliant move to cut pay-roll taxes.
Get ready, because the world as we know it is about to be shaken up; drastically. If you are a working-class person, your life is going to be turned upside down; tens of millions of Americans are about to understand the definition of austerity.
Don’t you think it is time you acquaint yourself with Karl Marx and the socialist alternative to capitalism?
Will we bury capitalism and say good riddance; or, will we all die along with this rotten failed capitalist system?
The working class is going to have to make up its mind- sooner rather than later because Joe Biden and the Democrats definitely are not going to be saving us.
It is time for the Left to build outside of the Democratic Party and realize that the Democrats only protect the interest of Wall Street and will never represent what is in the best interest of the working-class. The working-class must organize, with our own political institutions, and support and elect progressive leadership that will not sell-out to the Democratic Party. Seven months before the U.S. Election 2020, it is not too late to begin organizing.
PLEASE PRINT AND CIRCULATE
A SOCIALIST APPROACH TO HEALTHCARE REFORM
Statement issued March 2020
Socialists should be advocating for a socialist approach to health care reform. Thousands of working class families are forced to file medical bankruptcies because they can't even afford the Medicare co-pays required for medical coverage; working class families are losing their homes, automobiles and everything they worked a lifetime to acquire to pay health care debts.
Working class homeowners are being "offered" the scam of reverse home mortgages touted on television by Hollywood hucksters as a means to pay medical bills. Hundreds of doctors, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and nursing homes are making big profits from Medicare; this is also wrong, but Congress has done nothing to provide financial relief to millions of American households.
In many cases, patients routinely get double-billed for Medicare services; as the Wall Street Journal has noted, doctors and the reactionary American Medical Association have been put in charge of establishing what doctors get paid for their services under Medicare and this has pushed all health care costs up. Medicare could have been a step towards a National Public Health Care System, but instead Obama appointed the reactionary Alan Simpson to launch an attack on Medicare and Medicaid. Making the situation worse, all these profiteers are colluding to undermine Medicare by routinely and intentionally not "coding" bills properly so Medicare and insurance companies will deny claims. Insurance companies will not pay claims denied by Medicare. Al Capone would have loved today’s Medicare racket.
Democrats will now try to convince people they are for Medicare for All in an attempt to prevent a discussion about the real solution to this health care mess; a National Public Health Care System, which would be based on the model of public education. A National Public Health Care System is what we need today, as opposed to Medicare for All. We need a health care system that is all-inclusive and comprehensive, covering everything from pre-natal to burial.
A National Health Care System would cover all public healthcare needs: general health, dental, vision, hearing and mental care; also, family planning, including abortions. Everything Planned Parenthood does should be included and expanded. A national health care system would be publicly financed, publicly administered, publicly delivered; similar to public education.
The critiques of a national health care system also question: How is it affordable? With a huge Peace Dividend; end militarism and these dirty imperialist wars. We don't need a trillion-dollar update and upgrade of the nuclear weapons arsenal. We definitely don't need a trillion-dollar F-35 fighter jet program. We don't need over 825 U.S. foreign military bases dotting the globe. We do need hundreds of community and neighborhood health care centers dispensing free health care across our country, creating twelve to fifteen million good-paying jobs.
We must insist on progressive funding for a National Public Health Care System (tax the rich, end militarism and wars, a tax on Wall Street transactions, increase the payroll tax on employers not workers) instead of the regressive and reactionary method used for funding public education: local property taxes, which serves to under-mine and under-fund public education. And we must insist there be no for-profit feeding at the public trough with a National Public Health Care System like there is with public education.
Those supporting Medicare for All and Obamacare are very selfish people even though they hypocritically claim to be so concerned about people who will lose coverage; but they won’t lose any sleep for those of us who can't afford the "benefits" of what they are defending and offering. If they really cared, they would be calling for reforms to the present Medicare mess rather than calling for shifting this mess to even more people with the co-pays and expensive Medicare Part B. These co-pays and the high price of Medicare Part B mean nothing to these selfish well-heeled upper middle-class Democratic Party hacks; but they should be held accountable for what they want to dump on the rest of us; another for-profit health care system.
When all is said and done, these Democratic Party hacks don't even have any intentions of delivering what they claim to be supporting; they are just playing us for fools just like they have done in every single election since 1948. Alexandria Occasio-Cortez let the cat out of the bag when she told the health care industry not to worry that Bernie Sanders Medicare for All had no chance of passing.
When Medicare was finally delivered, it was only for a small part of the population and they never made any attempt to improve it even though they could have been making “incremental reforms” over all these years; but they sure spent a lot of time making it less inclusive; these aren't people we can entrust with health care reform. After all, it was these same Democratic Party hacks who worked behind our backs to derail even a mild single-payer reform.
The price, we the working class pay for these dirty imperialist wars is preventing us from having the world-class National Public Health Care System we are entitled to. We, the working class, have created the wealth being squandered on militarism and wars as the Wall Street crowd profits from both health care, militarism and wars, and these Wall Street parasites hoard the rest of the wealth we have created. We don't need, nor want, a market-based for-profit health care system.
The only way to resolve this health care mess is through a socialized National Public Health Care System; just as controversial as public education, which would be based on the model of public education which has been proven to work so well when properly funded and administered.
Let us be clear about this: Defending Obamacare is not the way to get us closer to real health care reform. The Affordable Care Act should be repealed and replaced with a National Public Health Care System. Obamacare is nothing but the "Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industry Bailout and Profit Maximization Act." Obama promised Single-Payer Medicare for All when first campaigning for president, which probably won him the election, and then he turned around and betrayed those who voted for him.
There are many ways to pay for a National Public Health Care System: Through a Peace Dividend. A payroll tax on employers. A hefty tax on corporate profits. A tax on all Wall Street transactions. It will probably take a combination of all of these.
Making a national health care model work, all levels of government must be concerned about a healthy food chain and a healthy and safe living environment, along with a healthy and safe working environment with a focus on education that emphasizes how to stay healthy and fit, and a health care system which stresses preventative health care. How can we be healthy when our air, water and land is being polluted and contaminated?
A majority of the American people want no parts of a market-driven for-profit health care system. It must also be noted the very same Democratic Party hacks, over-paid media pundits, think-tanks and front groups and their "partners" now pushing this Medicare for All scam, which was mobilized under the leadership of the Campaign for America's Future, were the same ones who banded together to derail and disrupt the single-payer universal health care movement in order to make way for Barack Obama's "Affordable Care Act" which has only made health care more expensive for most people while still leaving tens of millions without any access to health care.
We should also remember that it was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, who fervently advocated for socialized health care. We need a National Public Health Care System; everyone in, nobody left out. Eleanor Roosevelt advocated health care as a human right in helping to draft the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights; so did Dr. Martin Luther King. Repeal Obamacare and replace it with a National Public Health Care System. Let’s end the healthcare for profit game; put doctors and all health care workers on the public payroll in government facilities.
The socialist approach to health care reform centers on three points:
- Public funding
- Public administration
- Public delivery
Nothing is any more controversial than public education. Democracy requires this discussion on healthcare be brought into the public square by socialists.
PLEASE PRINT AND CIRCULATE
Trump’s Peace Plan for the Middle East
Statement Issued February 2020
On its face, Trump’s “Peace Plan” is nothing but the epitome of imperialist arrogance since it was being conceived in secrecy for over two years without so much as seeking the input, let alone approval of the Palestinian people or even of the United States Congress.
Any citizen based initiative must include all U.S. support and funding of the Israeli killing machine must end, and support for the Palestinians having a seat at the table.
The United States, Great Britain, France and Germany must finance the burden of Palestinian development including building homes, schools. hospitals, farms and orchards and an infrastructure enabling the Palestinians to recover from the destruction they have been the victim of.
All walls blocking free access to Israel by the Palestinian people must be removed.
Without imperialist meddling inciting racist animosities, Jews and Palestinians can, and will, find the ways to live in peace through citizen initiatives based on mutual understanding and respect for one another.
Meir Vilner, a staunch anti-imperialist and anti-fascist proponent of socialism--- prominent both as a founder of Israel and a most respected politician by both Jews and Palestinians, always pointed out that unless Israel enforced full equality and full civil rights for all of its citizens along with living in peace and harmony with all of its neighbors, Israel would fail as an independent country… and this remains true today.
No more arms for Israel!
End the U.S. funding of the Israeli military apparatus!
Justice for the Palestinian people!
What you can do:
- Circulate this statement.
- Organize forums and debates.
- Write letters to members of Congress and your local papers.
- Demonstrate.
- Citizen participation in formulating a just and peaceful foreign policy is required.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Denounces Middle East Proposal
https://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/2020/jimmy-carter-denounces-middle-east-proposal.html
January 30, 2020
For Immediate Release
(بالعربية)
Atlanta – President Trump’s plan for unilateral annexation to Israel of a large piece of the occupied Palestinian territories offers the Palestinians fragmented statehood, without control of their borders, in four years and subject to certain conditions, and leaves the status of large parts of the West Bank to be determined in the future. Prime Minister Netanyahu has called for the immediate annexation to Israel of all settlements in the West Bank.
The plan violates the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, which is codified in a long line of United Nations Security Council resolutions from 242 (1967) to 2334 (2016). Further, the proposal breaches international law regarding self-determination, the acquisition of land by force, and annexation of occupied territories. By calling Israel “the nation state of the Jewish people,” the plan also encourages the denial of equal rights to the Palestinian citizens of Israel.
President Carter said, “The new U.S. plan undercuts prospects for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians. If implemented, the plan will doom the only viable solution to this long-running conflict, the two-state solution.” President Carter urged member states of the United Nations “to adhere to UN Security Council resolutions and to reject any unilateral Israeli implementation of the proposal by grabbing more Palestinian land.”
Because we lack a broad-based mass anti-imperialist movement the American people have no say in any process.