This posting and others can be read at http://www.socialdemocraticpartyofamerica.org/08campaigns.htm
The President of the United States of America cannot fix all of the world's problems. Yet, the American presidency is the most powerful elected office in the world. Senator Barack Obama will accept the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party exactly 45 years after the 1963 March for Jobs and Justice. The "March on Washington" is best remembered today as the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have A Dream" speech, which is perhaps most brilliant political oratory in this nation's history. The force of Dr. King's speech influenced President John Kennedy and his successor Lyndon Johnson to enact legislation ending racial discrimination. President Johnson, shortly after taking office, echoed the cry of civil rights marchers in a nationally televised speech. "We shall overcome," intoned the president and we did! The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act outlawed most public forms of discrimination. Johnson skillfully used the power of the executive office to right a major domestic wrong in his advocacy of both bills. The leaders of America's black, civil rights, and trade union communities, however, knew that the work was just beginning in the effort to build a nation free of both poverty and repression when they attended the signing ceremonies.
Now we are engaged, not in a new struggle, but in the next phase of that same struggle. Public discrimination on the basis of color and gender is illegal, but private racism and sexism remain virulent. Barack Obama and that of Senator Hilary Clinton are proud to be the beneficiaries of the appropriate use of executive authority. However, the last eight years has seen a woeful usurpation of authority by the White House. The George W. Bush administration used the first foreign attack in more than a half century against Americans, upon their own soil, to govern by executive fiat. The administration lied about the dangers of one regime and ignored the actual perpetrators. Bush led a war, not against the terrorists of 9-11, but against the American working class. Using tax breaks for corporations and the rich, wealth has been redistributed from the average wage earner to the economic elites. Never has the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us been so wide. Those supporting George Bush and John McCain count on American workers being divided. These financial elites are literally banking on Americans remaining preoccupied by differences in race, color, creed, gender, national origin, and life style. By concentrating on what makes us different, we allow our government to fail us. We must make our government again "uphold, support, and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic".
We are the Social Democrats, USA. We are the only legitimate heir to the Socialist Party of America. Our heritage includes Eugene Debs, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, Helen Keller, Norman Thomas, A. Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin. It was Randolph and Rustin who planned and brought together the 1963 March for Jobs and Justice. Dr. King might have had a very small audience if not for Randolph and Rustin. Randolph, a life long member of the social democratic movement, organized the first predominantly black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Rustin, a long time peace and human rights activist, counseled Dr. King, and his colleagues as they developed their plans for nonviolent resistance to "Jim Crow" Randolph and Rustin were able to unite the struggle of workers with the struggles of minorities, hence the March for JOBS and JUSTICE. The Labor Movement supported the March with both finances and numbers. Many other members of the SPA helped make the march a watershed moment. This included the individual Dr. King called "the bravest man I ever knew", socialist elder statesman, Norman Thomas. Young People's Socialist League members Rochelle Horowitz and Tom Kahn wrote speeches for John Lewis, among others. The SD,USA enthusiastically embraces the candidacies of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They are part of our own broad, pro-labor, anti-totalitarian, liberal tradition as were Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Walter Reuther, Harry Truman, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, Hubert Humphrey, and Michael Harrington. Obama and Biden are THE candidates to continue the dream of Jobs and Freedom for all.
"The combination of black and white workers will be a powerful lesson to the capitalists of the solidarity of labor. It will show that labor, black and white, is conscious of its interests and power. This will prove that unions are not based upon race lines, but upon class lines. This will serve to convert a class of workers, which has been used by the capitalist class to defeat organized labor, into an ardent, class conscious, intelligent, militant group." (taken from an editorial the socialist newspaper, The Messenger, 1912) The late A. Philip Randolph, honorary chair, Social Democrats, USA."
"Social democracy is a practical ideal. It will not come about by decree, certainly not by force, but because a majority of Americans – blacks and whites, trade unionists, intellectuals, and youth – learns from practical experience that social democracy is the best and only way to achieve economic justice and political freedom." The late Bayard Rustin, National Chairman Social Democrats, USA.
"There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism." The late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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