After the Seattle Victory

#Yes All SOCIALIST Women p.10 We Need a Party of the 99% - p.3 ALTERNATIVE Issue #5 - July-August 2014 @SocialistAlt www.SocialistAlternative.org /SocialistAlternativeUSA Price $2 Socialist Alternative After the Seattle supports Victory... Build a Nationwide Movement to End Poverty Wages WHAT WE STAND FOR WHY I AM A SOCIALisT Fighting for the 99% J Immediate, unconditional legalization Jay Monaco and equal rights for all undocumented J No budget cuts to education and social Temple, NH services! Full funding for all community immigrants. needs. A major increase in taxes on the rich J Build a mass movement against police Retail Worker and big business, not working people. The brutality and the institutional racism of federal government should bail out states to the criminal justice system. Invest in prevent cuts and layoffs. rehabilitation, job training, and living-wage J Create living-wage union jobs for all the jobs, not prisons! Abolish the death penalty. J unemployed through public works programs Fight sexual harassment, violence against I’m a part-time retail worker earning nine dollars to develop mass transit, renewable energy, women, and all forms of sexism. an hour. Even in salaried, “professional” jobs I’ve infrastructure, health care, education, and J Defend a woman’s right to choose whether held in the past – benefits and all – I was in a hor- affordable housing. and when to have children. For a publicly ribly precarious and insecure position with regard to J Raise the federal minimum wage to $15/ funded, single-payer health care system my employment and my finances. hour, adjusted annually for cost of living with free reproductive services, including all I’ve been hearing since the days of Bill Clinton increases, as a step toward a living wage forms of birth control and safe, accessible that if I “work hard and play by the rules,” everything for all. abortions. Comprehensive sex education. will basically work out for the best. Such rules don’t seem to be much of a factor for the great J Free, high quality public education for all Paid maternity and paternity leave. Fully capitalists of American finance who gambled with the fortunes of billions and lost – faced not from pre-school through college. Cancel subsidized, high-quality child care. a single legal consequence. They don’t seem to be much of a factor for mainstream politicians student debt. Full funding for schools to J Equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and who start wars, spy on social justice movements, and enact policies designed to crush work- dramatically lower teacher-student ratios. transgender people, including same-sex ers – which is to say, people like me and you. Stop the focus on high stakes testing and marriage. I’m tired of low expectations, and my spirit will not be deflated. I’m thirty years old, I’ve come to terms with my identity as a worker, and it’s time for me to stand up for my interests the drive to privatize public education. Money for Jobs and Education, J Free, high quality health care for all. Replace and yours. the failed for-profit insurance companies with Not War At the same time, this is not and can never be a struggle of individualism or isolation. The a publicly funded single-payer system as a J End the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. time has come for organization and unity, to speak with one voice as much as we can. Social- step toward fully socialized medicine. Bring all the troops home now! ist Alterantive’s platform matches up with our interests and even our dreams as workers. This is an organization that is serious about actively forming a left-labor opposition movement that J A guaranteed decent pension for all. No cuts J Slash the military budget. No drones. Shut down Guantanamo. represents all of us, right here in the US of A. to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid! I choose socialism; I choose to fight on behalf of all those oppressed because the only J Repeal the Patriot Act, the NDAA, and all J Stop home foreclosures and evictions. For alternative is to take the side of oppression and injustice. I am a socialist because, at thirty other attacks on democratic rights. public ownership and democratic control of years old, I’ve come to terms with who I am. It’s time for my action to be consistent with my the major banks. Break with the Two Parties identity. Solidarity. J J A minimum guaranteed weekly income of $600/week for the unemployed, disabled, of Big Business stay-at-home parents, the elderly, and others J For a mass workers’ party drawing together unable to work. workers, young people, and activists from Help Fund the Fight Against J Repeal all anti-union laws like Taft-Hartley. workplace, environmental, civil rights, and For democratic unions run by the rank-and- women’s campaigns to provide a fighting, file to fight for better pay, working conditions, political alternative to the corporate parties. Corporate Domination and social services. Full-time union officials J Unions and social movement organizations should be regularly elected and receive the should stop funding and supporting the Socialist Alternative played a decisive role in pushing forward independent anti- average wage of those they represent. Democratic and Republican Parties and corporate politics in 2013 with viable and even victorious campaigns. Since then, we were at the forefront of the fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage and the historic J No more layoffs! Take bankrupt and failing instead organize independent left-wing, anti- victory in Seattle. We’ve shown that Socialist Alternative gets results! We need your companies into public ownership and corporate candidates and coalitions as a first help with a donation this summer. retool them for socially necessary green step toward building a workers’ party. We are establishing new branches throughout the country. We aim to set up more production. Socialism and Internationalism offices of Socialist Alternative and to put out our newspaper more frequently. We need J Shorten the workweek with no loss in pay J Capitalism produces poverty, inequality, money to fund speaking tours, local campaigns, and a National Convention at the end and benefits; share out the work with the environmental destruction, and war. We of this summer. unemployed and create new jobs. need an international struggle against this Please dig deep and donate today! Environmental Sustainability system. PO Box 45343 J socialistalternative.org/donate/ J Fight climate change. Organize mass Repeal corporate “free trade” agreements, Seattle, WA 98145 protests and civil disobedience to block which mean job losses and a race to the the Keystone XL oil pipeline, coal export bottom for workers and the environment. terminals, and fracking. Massive public J Solidarity with the struggles of workers and investment in renewable energy and oppressed peoples internationally: An injury efficiency technologies to rapidly replace to one is an injury to all. fossil fuels. J Take into public ownership the top 500 SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE J A major expansion of public transportation corporations and banks that dominate Socialist Alternative is a national organization fighting in our workplaces, communities, to provide low-fare, high-speed, accessible the U.S. economy. Run them under the and campuses against the exploitation and injustices people face every day. We are union transit. democratic management of elected activists fighting for workers’ rights and militant, democratic labor unions; we are a diverse organization combatting racism, students organizing against sweatshops and war, ordinary J Public ownership of the big energy representatives of the workers and the people demanding full legalization for all undocumented workers, women and men fighting companies. All workers in polluting industries broader public. Compensation to be paid on sexism and homophobia. should be guaranteed retraining and new the basis of proven need to small investors, We campaign for the building of a mass workers’ party to represent the interests of living-wage jobs in socially useful green not millionaires. workers, youth, and the environment against the two parties of big business. We see the production. J A democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the interests of the overwhelming global capitalist system as the root cause of terrorism, war, poverty, discrimination, and Equal Rights for All majority of people and the environment. environmental destruction. As capitalism moves deeper into crisis and recession, a new generation of workers and youth must join together to take the top 500 corporations into J Fight discrimination based on race, For a socialist United States and a socialist public ownership. We believe the dictatorships that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern nationality, gender, sexual orientation, world. J Europe were perversions of what socialism is really about. We are for democratic socialism religion, disability, age, and all other forms of where people will have control over their daily lives. prejudice. Equal pay for equal work. Socialist Alternative is in political solidarity with the Committee for a Workers Interna- tional, a worldwide socialist organization in 47 countries, on every continent. Join us! J 2 socialist alternative.org • July-august 2014 MINIMUM WAGE Letter from Kshama Sawant We Won – Now Let’s Spread the Struggle! Dear readers of Socialist Alternative, you are, I urge you to join 15 Now, donate at 15Now.org, In my election campaign last fall and in the move- and help spread this grassroots movement nationally. ment for $15, I learned that working people are inspired I’m so proud to stand with all of you, celebrating the suc- Second, workers cannot rely on the two parties of by an unapologetic, principled approach. Let’s demand cess of our movement.

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