Sure you can, but joining as individuals is not likely to get you any voice in it.
>Actually, at the '98 convention we developed electoral
>requirements, and all the people who'd been saying that they wanted to run
>candidates immediately ... didn't. This is because running a credible
>campaign is quite hard and requires a lot of base-building, fundraising, etc.
Yes, it is and it does. What's the benchmark is the LP aiming for -- the size of the party, the funds, etc. -- in order to run a credible campaign, and when does it foresee it will reach it?
>However, the referendum campaigns--about 12 or so--have been pretty
>successful in that they've (a) won without exception and (b) built the group,
>at least in our case.
I read about some of them at <http://lpa.igc.org/lppress/lpp61_elections.html>; is this the strategy, winning nonbinding referenda?
> >As for the LP and the empire, here's a short list of problems:
>>
>>(1) Today, even just fighting bread-and-butter trade union struggles
>>of necessity brings you up against the wall of "national security"
>>and Taft-Hartley, especially if your union represents workers whose
>>work is of strategic importance to US economy, to say nothing of
>>doing anything bigger than that, like making the LP a powerful social
>>force to reckon with;
>
>Only one of our main campaigns directly addresses rights on the job, and that
>from an unexpected angle. The others (health care, free higher ed, etc.)
>address the population at large, many of whom would join a union if they
>could but they can't. With walls, of course, the idea is not to charge
>directly at it, piling up concussed bodies and doing the enemy's work.
The LP is not in a position to "charge directly at it," for sure. By campaigns, you mean educational campaigns through referenda and the like?
> >(2) After the end of the Cold War, capital has no reason to make the
>>sort of compromise that it once made with unions (in exchange for
>>support of anticommunist US foreign policy);
>
>But the pressure in these cases is not simply external, without the CIO, for
>example, why would they need to have bought us off? Or without those lil'
>ol' U.S. union struggles from, say, 1886 to 1946.
Sure, and in 1947 (the year that marked the rise of the Red Purge), a lot changed politically, including unions.
> >(3) Contradictions of neoliberal capitalism are now coming to a head
>>- -- US economy may be possibly in for a Japan or worse yet a hard
>>landing, with unforeseeable effects on global economy as well.
>>
>>How will the LP confront (1), (2), and (3)?
>
>We'd be stupid to think the role of the LP is to 'confront' the empire status
>of the U.S.
Can't it confront _at least a small part_ of the empire's agenda, like the war on Iraq?
***** Build the Future: Labor Party Convention and Conference Resolutions and Constitutional Amendments
National Security Resolution
Whereas the INC indicated in its statement adopted on October 5, 2001, that we unequivocally support all legitimate efforts to find those responsible for the horrific terrorist attacks on September 11 and to bring them to justice, as well as all necessary and appropriate actions directed toward securing the safety and protection of our nation and its people;
Whereas we recognize such acts of terrorism, whether they originate from foreign or domestic sources, as attacks first and most of all on this country's workers, and that from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to Oklahoma City, America's workers are those who have suffered most from such acts, both directly and indirectly;
Whereas we recognize that it is also America's workers and their families who are called upon to face the dangers of such military engagements as are necessary to maintain genuine national security;
Whereas the Bush administration, with almost uniformly bipartisan support in Congress, has sought to exploit the national concern about terrorism to impose its program of diverting resources from pressing domestic issues and its demands that we knuckle under to a corporate-driven agenda here and abroad;
Whereas the Bush administration, with bipartisan Congressional support, already has required union givebacks as a condition of its $15 billion airline bailout package and, citing national security concerns, the administration and Congress also denied federalized airport security workers the right to organize and bargain collectively;
Whereas in the name of preventing terrorism, Bush and corporations want to curb workers' and communities' right to know about the dangerous chemicals and processes that exist in their facilities, and they hope to criminalize any worker who blows the whistle by divulging such information;
Whereas the Bush administration's proposal for a new Department of Homeland Security also claims national security concerns as an excuse for eliminating 17,000 jobs and stripping 170,000 workers of civil service protections;
Whereas state and local governments, including port authorities, have used similar justifications in attempting to restrict workers' rights to strike and bargain collectively, such as the Utah legislature's attempt to pass a bill that would define as "commercial terrorism" any action that infringes on any business's ability to conduct its transactions, which could apply to strikes, pickets and perhaps boycotts;
Whereas the wave of arbitrary repression and denial of civil rights and liberties of immigrant workers and their families is first and foremost an attack on workers and their rights to organize; Whereas repressive measures that stigmatize some workers invariably signal repression of all workers and the labor movement in general;
Whereas we recognize in our Labor Party Program that infringements on civil rights and civil liberties are by definition attacks on workers' rights; Whereas we also recognize that, now more than ever, repression of workers anywhere is repression of workers everywhere; and
Whereas, consistent with our commitments to fair trade and worker solidarity, our Program states clearly: We oppose all policies instituted by corporate-dominated lending institutions like the World Bank that force developing nations to lower the wages of their workers. We will especially strive to bring pressure to bear on those U.S.-based transnational corporations that are violating labor rights in other nations of the world, and to fight against any U.S.- based policies that would undermine the rights of workers in other nations to organize.
Therefore be it resolved that: 1. We support the legitimate use of national security to protect our country and its workers from terrorist attacks from domestic and international sources. 2. We reaffirm our Program's "demand that our government stop doing the bidding of global corporations and stop using military and foreign policy to prop up anti-labor regimes that violate human rights." 3. We oppose all attacks on the rights of America's workers, and we oppose all efforts to undercut public funding for important domestic programs under the guise of national defense. 4. We support workers' rights on the job and oppose any and all efforts to deny or limit these rights for Federal workers in the new Federal Department of Homeland Security or for any other workers.
<http://www.thelaborparty.org/c_res3.html> *****
No criticism of -- much less opposition to -- the war on Iraq (not even from the point of view of preventing potential harms to US service personnel that you mentioned earlier) here. Is this as far as the LP can go on international policy?
>I suppose your point is that we'll never get the things we want
>as long as the U.S. is an empire. That's not a good argument for not
>fighting for them, however.
Some things we want we may be able to win, without changing the framework in which our struggles take place; other things we probably can't, without doing so. The line between possible and unlikely reforms is certainly debatable.
>Look, hardly anyone's talking to working class people about any kind of
>coherent, pro-worker program. In contrast, we've got plenty of right wingers
>talking to working class people--especially to white guys. And we've got
>quite a few people screaming 'imperialism' from the streetcorner. If you
>want a hard landing which features a lot of people taking their frustration
>out on those who should be their allies--women, minorities, immigrants--then
>the recipe is: talk only to the most pure, and don't talk about jobs, health
>insurance, childcare, wages or work hours--instead, start with imperialism.
The thing is, we want neither a Japan nor a hard landing, but we may be in for either anyhow, in part because of our weakness at present and for the last several decades here. Surely such macroeconomic questions affect jobs, health insurance, childcare, wages, work hours, etc.
Dare I say it, I also think that a program that lacks opposition to the kind of war that Bush & Co. will be waging is neither coherent nor very pro-worker.
>To me, the question is how to find the resources to build around the solid
>working-class agenda we have, cause people fucking love it when they hear
>about it. Abolish insurance companies? Abolish Mondays? Free college?
>Where do I sign?
A good number of Americans will want to sign it if they ever hear about it, but the LP being what it is, not too many Americans have heard about it yet; other Americans will want to know how we gonna pay for all that while paying for war and maintaining profits. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>