Friday, November 1, 2024
U.S. Presidential Election, November 5
Only the Working Class and People Will Create the Kind of Change the People Want
Mass action in New York City marking one year of U.S./Zionist genocide and one year of resistance, October 5,
2024
• Only the Working Class and People Will Create
the Kind of
Change the People Want
• Dysfunctional Congress, Courts, Department of
Justice,
Cartel Parties and More
• Criminalization of Refugees Also Prepares Ground
for Aggression Against Mexico
• Human Rights Organizations Demand Closure
of Guantánamo
Migrant Detention Camp
U.S. Presidential Election, November 5
Only the Working Class and People Will Create the Kind of Change the People Want
The central issue in the U.S. presidential election which will take place in less than a week is that no matter which candidate wins the most electoral college votes, they will not bring in the kind of change the people want. Whoever wins, the U.S. working class and people will persist in waging their fight for the rights of all, at home and abroad. Even as the campaign winds down, they continue to oppose genocide, in Gaza and Lebanon and continue making their claims on society. Militant demonstrations will take place on November 2 in many cities raising the call: No Votes for Genocide!
Whether
on campuses, workplaces, or communities people are stepping up their
organized resistance and developing a people's way forward to bring
about the change U.S. society and rule require. Debates, seminars,
tribunals and demonstrations are planned for the coming months to hold
government and
university officials accountable.
The frenzy to cover up that elections serve to block the change demanded is such that the last week of the campaign has become totally irrational. It involves the juxtaposition of the extreme violence and extreme racism promoted by Donald Trump with the desperate appeal of Kamala Harris for everyone to vote for her because she is not as extreme as Trump. It is tantamount to telling voters she is a better choice because she has killed fewer people than Trump, which is factually not even true given the genocide the Biden/Harris administration is responsible for in Gaza.
How many persons killed is okay to qualify for president, one is left to wonder. The fact that both candidates represent the worst killing machine ever known in the modern era is not up for discussion. Nor is the prospect that both will increase presidential police powers with their impunity and lack of accountability for war crimes and genocide at home and abroad. While the two candidates are portrayed as one standing for the Constitution and one wanting to smash it, in fact both stand for intensifying presidential powers to act above and against the law at home and abroad. Harris repeatedly calls to uphold the Constitution to defend democracy, while Trump calls to break any obstacles in the path of "Making America Great Again."
We are witnessing a frenzy to line people up behind Harris even if they oppose everything she stands for, to avert the danger of the extreme racism and violence which Trump is seen to represent, and does indeed represent. However, to think that the system Harris is part of and champions is not characterized by the very same extreme racism and violence, is not rational. It also counters the advanced stand taken by all those who stand firmly against genocide and all those responsible for it.
This is why unprecedented numbers of people will continue to reject the "choice" between one candidate and the other. Many are doing so because they reject the entire system which these candidates represent. It is clear to them that Harris, Trump, and the existing institutions stand against democracy, peace, and freedom.
History is calling on the peoples to march on to create a modern democracy of their own making. Conciliation with the rotten institutions called democratic, with the Constitution which was a compromise with slavery and oligopoly, against democracy and for wage and penal slavery, is not an option.
This is the central issue in this election.
Dysfunctional Congress, Courts, Department of Justice, Cartel Parties and More
The failure of all the existing institutions in the United States is a problem which leads the U.S. ruling class to resort to governing through the police powers of the presidency itself. This is why the program of both presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, is to strengthen the presidential powers and govern with impunity on the basis of these police powers which are above the rule of law.
Nowadays,
the office of the presidency has been taken over by narrow private
interests. It has become commonplace for private interests such as
BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, the war industry and their ilk to
dictate the decisions and course of action the president takes. People
like Elon Musk and Reed Hastings of Netflix are not the only ones
likely to be given a position in an upcoming administration.
This is possible because the Congress, courts, Department of Justice, cartel parties and more have become dysfunctional. Besides voluminous amounts of evidence of massive corruption, such as with members of Congress beholden to the funding provided by narrow private interests in return for services which must be rendered, the Congress has proven itself incapable of holding serious debate on issues of concern to the people. It pays no heed to the needs of the people.
Passing of significant legislation, other than Pentagon and war funding, is limited. Congress was again unable to pass the federal budget by the start of the fiscal year October 1, a crucial issue for the people. Instead, the government was brought to the verge of a shutdown from lack of funds, meaning hundreds of thousands of federal workers would be laid off, payments for benefits like social security and Medicare threatened, and more. Then Congress only provided enough funding to keep government functioning until December -- conveniently, to avoid accountability, after the election -- meaning another shutdown looms at that time.
The divisions within the Congress, and between Congress, the president and the states, such as over immigration, abortion and voting rights, are not conducive to passing substantial legislation or ensuring a peaceful transition of power in this election. Processes designed to sort out conflicts on a peaceful basis through wheeling and dealing to reach a compromise, such as for the budget, no longer achieve the desired results.
Biden's forte before he became president in 2021 came from his years as a senator where wheeling and dealing became his specialty. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, re-elected in 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002 and 2008, the hope of the ruling class was that, as president, his skills would help preserve the Union. Far from it, the contradictions between vested interests in the U.S. are such that the tendency to have matters land in the hands of the courts increased. This refers to both federal courts and state courts which are themselves deeply discredited, as is the Justice Department itself. Decisions rendered by the courts and the Department of Justice are so highly partisan and political and the level of corruption in the Supreme Court is such that people with a clear conscience know the justice system is part of the problem, not a solution.
The racist mass incarceration and police killings, the privatization of prisons owned by judges themselves, the expanding detention camps with indefinite detention, cop killings with impunity, creation of places like Cop City, the branding of protesters as terrorists and broad attacks on the people's resistance movements are a sign of weakness, not strength. Promising more law and order and suppression of freedom of speech in the name of security is an indication of the disastrous direction in which the United States is increasingly being taken.
The lack of functioning political parties is also evident. It can be seen in the low level of political discourse, in Congress and on the campaign trail and in the replacement of Party electoral machinery with the personal machinery of candidates. The parties have lost direct contact with the people at a local level and even there, the factional fighting splits the ranks of grass roots organizations.
The national apparatus of political parties is also no longer operating as before in light of the competing private interests. Their main job has been to organize the presidential conventions every four years and provide funding for campaigns but today, whichever faction dominates in a given state or federal race determines who does and does not get funds, who faces primary challenges from within their own ranks, etc.
Congresspersons like Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush, both outspoken defenders of Palestine, were defeated by fellow "Democrats" in their primary races. This was thanks in part to huge funding provided by the Zionists' American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), $14.5 million to defeat Bowman alone. Of course, such funding is not considered foreign interference in an election.
Add to this the intervention of the intelligence agencies two weeks before the election, claiming foreign interference by Russia and China "to undermine confidence in the elections." This is not only to further promote fear but an attempt to divert from the broad dissatisfaction and rejection of the existing institutions, where confidence among the people has hit rock bottom. This effort at diversion, seen as a means to favor the election of Kamala Harris, in fact serves to further discredit the executive branch of government and the intelligence agencies themselves.
Oligopolies comprised of private interests and funders accountable to no one are operating and selecting representatives. What exists today are not political parties engaged in informing and politicizing the public, but factions operating like mafia cartels, using dictate and violence. Negotiations and politics to achieve a political aim which favors the polity have long since been done away with. The results are evident today.
It is clear to most people that elections no longer serve to sort out the conflicts within the ruling class or between the ruling class and the people. Factions vying for power resort to whatever it takes to win. The narrow private interests which have usurped the powers of the state at the federal and state levels have eliminated any conception of a system which serves "the public good."
Public authorities and services are in shambles while both Harris and Trump vow that the solution for the serious problems confronting humanity is an even greater concentration of power in the hands of the president. The police powers of the presidency are no longer held in check.
The cartels operate during elections to intensify their efforts to sow fear and divisions and spread disinformation to block the people from developing their own reference point for discussing and acting in a manner that is to their advantage.
In this election, all of it has given rise to a situation in which
visibly the rulers cannot control the movements for the kind of change
the people are striving to bring into being. The broadening and
strengthening of the resistance movement in support of Palestine and
now Lebanon as well has
been seen without let-up in the month of October alone, such as on
October 5-6, as well as at the Democratic and Republican National
Conventions. Opposition to the attacks on immigrants and refugees and
against Cop City in Atlanta, Georgia, opposition to police killings and
mass incarceration, and
the protests against the abandonment of people left destitute when
facing heat, drought, wild fires and devastation from hurricanes and
tropical storms, as well as determined labor and student actions, all
testify to a people determined to speak out in their own names and defy
attempts to silence
and suppress them using onerous penalties including firings, fines and
imprisonment.
The people's agenda is to develop new institutions of peoples' empowerment.
Criminalization of Refugees Also Prepares Ground
for Aggression
Against Mexico
Demonstration in New York
City opposing Biden's executive order to close the southern
border and illegally block refugees seeking asylum. June 6,
2024.
One of the main propaganda points used by both presidential candidates for the election to be held November 5 are threats against refugees and people entering through the southern U.S. border with Mexico. Fomenting fear, using racist distortions of events, criminalizing refugees at the southern border, as both Harris and Trump are doing, are not only to sow racist divisions but to lay the groundwork for further aggression and a potential invasion of Mexico.
Historically, in 1846-48, this was the line of action used to forestall the U.S. Civil War and keep those who became leading Confederate generals in line.
When it comes to the treatment of refugees, in many ways Trump and Harris play out the "good cop, bad cop" routine police powers are infamous for. Trump uses more openly racist attacks and threats of brutality, while Harris criminalizes asylum seekers as "unlawful," when the International Convention on Refugees, signed by the U.S., and U.S. law, clearly say this is not the case.
Both presidential contenders present people seeking asylum from the economic and political ravages the U.S. has imposed on their countries as threats, to be punished -- not human beings with rights. Both promote wide scale deportations, with the White House currently bragging about removing (deporting) or returning (illegally refusing asylum to) "more than three-quarters of a million people, more than in any fiscal year since 2010."
The Biden/Harris administration is using the prison at Guantánamo on U.S. occupied Cuban territory to indefinitely detain Haitians and other refugees. In a letter dated October 16, 125 human rights organizations demanded the Guantánamo Migrant Operations Center be closed and that asylum seekers be processed in "a manner consistent with U.S. human rights obligations. The U.S. government cannot continue to hide its diversion and mistreatment of asylum seekers by exiling them to Guantánamo, out of reach of their families, advocates, public consciousness — and the law."
Harris and Trump have said nothing about closing Guantánamo while continually criminalizing refugees.
The current Biden/Harris ban on refugees using a closed border is far broader than any Trump imposed when he was in office. By promoting executive orders with their presidential impunity, and closing borders, the stage is set for justifying going into Mexico as necessary to keep the refugees out and the border closed.
Both presidential candidates ignore the fact that immigrants are an integral part of the U.S. working class. They play a very militant and significant role in the fight of the U.S. working class and people for rights. So too refugees become a contingent of the working class as soon as they set foot on U.S. soil. Efforts to use fear and threats to divide workers are being challenged. In actions at both Democratic and Republican National Conventions, working people were united in rejecting attacks on immigrants and those seeking asylum. Many actions have also taken place on both sides of the southern border and in border cities like El Paso and others across the country.
As with their rejection of the U.S./Zionist genocide against the Palestinian people, Not in My Name
is
the response of demonstrators to attacks and demonization of immigrants
and refugees. This broad and firm resistance will certainly be a major
factor against any attempts to launch an
invasion of Mexico.
The reason U.S. rulers are considering an invasion of Mexico is to contend with the inability of the U.S. ruling class to unite the military and civilian bureaucracies and the industrial and financial private interests behind the presidency. It is seen as a way to preserve the Union at a time open violent civil war threatens to break out. Foreign policy failures of the Biden administration mean that attempts to use foreign wars to unite the military and civilian bureaucracy have failed. The U.S. under Biden has suffered one foreign policy defeat after the other: failures in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua plus Ukraine, Haiti and many more, including Lebanon and Yemen, China, the European Union, and individual European countries. And now, on the eve of the presidential election, the imminent failure to line up the Arab states behind U.S. schemes to create a Greater Israel is devastating to its striving to be world hegemon. Mexico is considered an easy target, but clearly U.S. rulers are again losing sight of the role of the peoples and their organized resistance.
Human Rights Organizations Demand Closure
of Guantánamo Migrant
Detention Camp
One hundred twenty-five human rights organizations sent a letter to President Biden October 16, demanding that the Guantánamo Migrant Operations Center be closed. The detention camp is especially being used to detain Haitians as well as others. Organizers brought forward the horrendous conditions at the detention camp, which houses children and families. These included lack of sanitation and medical care, lack of education for the children and the collective punishment used against people in the camp who reject these conditions and demand they be changed.
Organizers
brought out that Guantánamo serves as a black hole where people are
indefinitely detained, blocked from seeing lawyers and separated from
their families and friends. As remains true for the prison, using
Guantánamo serves to keep the detentions, punishments and government
racism out of
the public eye. It is a means to evade U.S. legal requirements to hear
claims for asylum, and lawsuits and legal challenges concerning
conditions.
The U.S. has a long history of specifically targeting Haitian refugees, and Haiti itself, as part of its revenge against the Haitian revolution that eliminated slavery and established a state based on human rights for all. As one of the organizers brought out, there is a connection between the targeting and slandering of Haitians in Springfield, Ohio and using Guantánamo to detain them. It is part of the U.S. racism, chauvinism and violence against Haiti and her people. Another brought out that Guantánamo has long been used to detain Haitians, with lawsuits defending their rights dating back to 1993.
Among the 125 organizations were those also organizing to close migrant detention camps inside the U.S. Both Guantánamo and detention camps inside the country are scheduled for expansion. Currently Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains more than 36,600 people in a network of more than 200 immigration detention camps across the country. This year, Biden signed a federal spending bill that increases funding for ICE to maintain an average daily population of 41,500 people in detention and provides the highest level of funding for custody and surveillance operations in ICE's history.
Detention camps inside the country also have horrendous conditions and similarly lack medical care, clean water, food and safe and sanitary living conditions. Hunger strikes, especially by women, have been organized to reject these conditions.
The demand is to immediately close Guantánamo and all detention camps and uphold the dignity and rights of immigrants and refugees.
We reprint below the letter to President Biden:
"The undersigned 125 organizations implore the Biden administration to stop detaining asylum seekers at Guantánamo Bay and to allow people interdicted at sea to seek protection in the United States. At a time when the administration is contemplating expanding the use of Guantánamo to detain Haitians who flee by sea, we urge you instead to process all asylum seekers in a manner consistent with human rights obligations and to close the Guantánamo Migrant Operations Center.
"People who had no choice but to flee by sea to escape persecution in their home countries shared their horrifying experiences at Guantánamo in Offshoring Human Rights: Detention of Refugees at Guantánamo Bay, a new report by the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP). One family, including two children, was interdicted by the U.S. Coast Guard and transferred to a dilapidated detention facility in Guantánamo Bay where they were held until IRAP threatened to file a lawsuit. The U.S. government denied them access to their attorneys and engaged in collective punishment in response to complaints about their treatment. For over a year, the U.S. government deprived the children of appropriate access to education, medical care, and mental health support, leading a physician at the Naval base to recommend their immediate release.
"Of equal concern is the U.S. government's practice of returning individuals interdicted at sea back to harm in their country of origin. Despite opposition from the United Nations and Members of Congress, the U.S. Coast Guard continues to interdict and repatriate Haitians to warzone-like conditions in Haiti. The U.S. government interdicted more than 11,000 people of different nationalities from October 2022 to September 2023 and sent almost 500 unaccompanied children back to Haiti. These policies and practices prevent asylum seekers from being able to access humanitarian protections in the United States.
"The United States has a disgraceful history of using Guantánamo Bay to operate secretive prisons away from public and legal scrutiny. We demand that your administration close the Guantánamo Migrant Operations Center and process asylum seekers encountered at sea in a manner consistent with U.S. human rights obligations. The U.S. government cannot continue to hide its diversion and mistreatment of asylum seekers by exiling them to Guantánamo, out of reach of their families, advocates, public consciousness -- and the law."
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Website: www.cpcml.ca • Email: editor@cpcml.ca