Veterans Affairs Protest here ♦ History Is on Our Side here ♦
VA Protest: Opportunities for Building ICWP
“Soldiers need to revolt!” This was the statement of G, an older worker who had been a longshore worker and is currently active in the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a civil rights organization. He had just read a letter in Red Flag about Navy Reservists refusing orders to turn an old building into a detention center for Haitian refugees. He was very interested in Red Flag and what we had to say. And we were very interested in what he had to say!
We met G at a Seattle demonstration at the local Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center protesting the proposed cuts to VA personnel and services.
Over the course of a couple of hours, about 25-30 people joined and we talked with most of them. An AFGE (American Federation of Government Employees) representative told us that the federal government had just cancelled the contract for their bargaining unit, as well as some other unions at the VA. Thousands of federal workers will lose their jobs and tens of thousands of veterans will lose healthcare access. Other workers whose jobs rely on federal funding (such as school workers) may be in the same boat. Our job is to bring their legitimate concerns to the bigger struggle of workers being attacked everywhere, with the understanding that a Communist revolution is the only solution.
G continued, “Republicans and Democrats don’t help the workers. They are not fighting for us. They need to be afraid of us!” He also said that there was a gap in training young people to be the new leaders of the movement. We said we found the same thing in our party and that we are working on developing new, younger leadership. We agreed with him that at the same time, the older leadership has a lot to learn from the young people.
We exchanged contact information and will be in touch.
There is a lot to learn from the people we meet at these demonstrations. Sometimes in our eagerness to tell them about communism, we neglect to hear what they have to say, and what they have learned from their experiences. We can better build real communist relationships and grow our party by listening as much as we speak.
Hoping that G will help us write more for Red Flag before long!
—Comrade in Seattle (US)
History is on our side! Red Flag
This is about Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for Mayor of New York. I think an article in a previous issue of RFBR should have made it clearer that trying to elect “progressive” candidates at this time is a dangerous diversion. It will not only divert the masses from the fight for communist revolution but will deliver them into fascism and genocidal World War III.
RFBR promotes writing articles based on what friends say about a subject. But I think the party needs to give more leadership to the discussion, showing clearly what the stakes and solution are.
Mamdani was elected in 2020 as a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly. He is a Social Democrat, like Bernie Sanders and Ocasio Cortez, who endorsed him. He has actively supported Democratic Party candidates for years. These politicians are not radicals or revolutionaries. They are part of the “loyal opposition” within the US Congress and Democratic Party.
They support capitalism (a brand they call Democratic Socialism, which includes wage slavery with the State as the boss) and imperialism. They oppose revolution and communism.
During the Weimar Republic in Germany (1919-1933), as the Nazis were building up strength in the midst of a worldwide capitalist crisis and preparations for World War II, the Social Democrats opposed and even “outed” communist workers who advocated crushing fascism with revolution. They were loyal to capitalism.
Some Communists, like R. Palme Dutt, leader of the UK CP, called them “social fascists.” They paved the way for fascist dictatorships, like Hitler.
We should see Mamdani’s candidacy in the context of the current crisis and expanding WWIII, as the RFBR article mentioned. He says he opposes the genocide in Gaza, but his candidacy is about fixing subways.
The US rulers don’t have the patriotic workers, youth, and soldiers they need — yet. They need politicians like Mamdani and Gavin Newsom to try to motivate multi-racial masses to support their system. They are desperate to turn youth and workers — angry at genocide, imperialism, and anti-immigrant racism — into supporters and reformers of capitalism.
When Obama ran for President, we warned friends about him. Some sharply disagreed, then later thanked us.
Promises like fixing the subways and rent control will go out the window in the rulers’ war budget. The rulers are desperate to build weapons to compete with and wage war against China. They will attack the working class harder, no matter who is in office.
Trump may want an army motivated by white supremacy and Mamdani one motivated by multicultural US patriotism. Both support US imperialism.
RFBR has a vital role to play to win youth and workers worldwide to see that voting and reform won’t end the bosses’ fascism and war. With comradely struggle, they’ll see that capitalism—in all its forms—is our mortal enemy.
We need to build a mass ICWP among youth, students, workers, and soldiers everywhere. Our fight is for communism, nothing less. Only communism will end genocide, wage slavery, racism, borders, imperialist war, and genocide.
—A Comrade