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Impeachment Efforts Continue in United States Organize Together for Politics of EmpowermentPublic hearings on the Trump impeachment, broadcast live, have begun, with various officials testifying. The monopoly media is filled with reports of every detail involving hours of testimony and hundreds of pages of depositions. There is speculation as to whether the various statements provided help or harm Trump, along with Trump's numerous tweets. Everyone is to be embroiled in every detail of who said what, what role the president did or did not play, whether individuals were acting on his orders or not, etc. Trump has also proclaimed he will not work with Congress as long as the impeachment process is taking place. This is yet further evidence of the intensifying conflicts among the rulers as to how to restore confidence in a dysfunctional system and how to maintain the unity of the country when the ruling factions are at war with one another.
What is needed now is politics of empowerment, politics by and for the working class and people. The rulers, including with impeachment, are striving to disempower and depoliticize the people, so as to preserve their power. We are to line up pro and con the individuals testifying, the various congresspeople involved, the process itself, the supposed apathy of the people about it, and so forth. How to resolve the current crisis of the existing institutions, their dysfunction, their lack of democracy, is not answered by becoming embroiled in the impeachment process and lining up for and against. While there is no doubt broad discontent with Trump, the bigger concern being widely expressed in actions and organizing of all kinds is with the existing democracy itself. It is a democracy which does not heed the will of the majority, which does not give voice to the people's concerns, which acts in their name while acting against their interests. The concerns of the people are silenced and government crimes at home and abroad, that are far more serious than those being investigated with impeachment, continue to occur with impunity.
Through their many struggles, the people are giving voice to their concerns and coming forward to speak out, in their own name and for their own interests. Now is the time to step up the work for politics of empowerment, to put this issue front and centre as the many battles for rights move forward. Voice of Revolution is a publication of the U.S. Marxist-Leninist Organization. (November 15, 2019)
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
The issue facing the people, however, is not the
power struggles and conflicts among the rulers but rather their own
struggle for political empowerment. With or without impeachment, the
existing system of representative democracy by and for the rich does
not serve the interests of the people. This is evident in their broad
rejection of the current direction of the country, their discontent
with the electoral process, including the many debates by Democrats
that ignore the people's main concerns, like issues of war and peace,
inequality, poverty and solutions for -- not talk about -- the
environment and a bright future for the youth.
In the current set up there is no place for
holding government accountable for genocide against African Americans
and Native peoples, for colonization of Puerto Rico, for militarization
of the border and police, for illegal aggressive wars, for collective
punishment of whole countries and more. Why no public hearings on these
matters of concern? No testimony by the people? No criminal charges for
those responsible? To do so would call the existing undemocratic nature
of the current system into question, something the rulers are striving
desperately to avoid.