The following article is a modified version of a speech delivered at a Sept. 19 meeting in Harlem.
We took on this election campaign because we understood that all political events this year would take place in the lens of the presidential elections. For anyone remotely interested in politics, all political questions—the Wall Street meltdown, the war in Iraq—would be framed in terms of what the candidates were saying.
That is the situation we are in today. Anyone who has had a discussion about politics with a fellow student, co-worker or friend knows that this question is on the minds of many working-class people.
Today, thanks to the hard work of our party, we have a way to engage in these discussions without feeding into either Democratic Party mania or into anti-political pessimism or cynicism. After tens of thousands of petitions, countless hours on the street and in the office, the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s candidates Gloria La Riva and Eugene Puryear are on the ballot in 12 states: Utah, Arkansas, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Vermont, Florida, Iowa, Colorado, Washington, New Jersey, Louisiana and New York!
We have put in all this work to build a tool to use in the class struggle. For the next six weeks, we will have the opportunity to use this tool as a way to intervene in the class struggle in New York and around the country.
Our party’s election campaign does not measure success in the same terms that the ruling class parties do. First of all, we are not about winning over the support of the ruling class. We are about building the strength of our class—the poor and working people that are exploited by this rotten capitalist system.
Our goal is not primarily to win votes, although we are honored by every single person who chooses to vote for Gloria and Eugene, whether it is out of respect for our party’s work or out of hatred of the capitalist system.
Our goal is to use our campaign as an arena to elevate class consciousness. That means, first and foremost, to try to increase our people’s confidence in their ability to fight and win. Our campaign is not, “Vote for us and we will set you free.” Our campaign is: “This system is rigged against us, and if we do not unite and fight, the rich will keep us in our place until we die.”
Our plan in New York City
That is why here in New York, we are launching a special project through the La Riva/Puryear election campaign.
As we spoke face-to-face with our class during our six weeks of petitioning this summer, one issue stood out: the issue of police brutality. Abuse and harassment are rampant in the African American and Latino neighborhoods in this city—and none of the big business candidates is addressing it.
They will never address the issue. The police are their police, to protect their property, their profits and their system. What better way to talk to our class, to bring a perspective of struggle to the elections, to offer our campaign as a vehicle to our communities, than to use our campaign to spotlight the issue of police brutality?
We are spending the next weeks in the streets collecting testimony on this trend of police harassment, abuse and brutality. We will tape record, type, and videotape every story of police abuse that we can find.
We are going to take all this testimony and make a web page for it on our VotePSL web site. Our campaign, to use a phrase of Lenin’s, will become a tribune of the people.
But we are not stopping there. Gloria and Eugene will be using this testimony as a way to force the issue of police brutality into the national spotlight. If it is not convenient for the liberal establishment to talk about the issue during an election year, if it is not convenient for the Democratic leadership to have to confront that issue, then let us socialists and communists force their hand.
And when we have finished collecting the testimony, we are aiming to hold a people’s trial where we present the evidence, and render our verdict: the people’s verdict.
The issue exposes the ruling class state: its arms of repression, its cops and courts and prisons. It exposes the need for another system.
Our demands
What is our campaign’s answer to the crisis of police brutality?
One, we call for people’s trials for killer cops. The courts will not give us the justice we deserve, so let us elect our own judges and juries specifically to try cases of police abuse. We can start with a trial for the killers of Sean Bell.
Two, the top cops need to face the same charges as the cops they command, with tougher penalties. The whole police chain of command is responsible for the reign of terror in our communities.
Three, it is time to convene a national convention for people’s justice. The criminal justice system—the whole prison-industrial complex—needs to go. We need a national forum where the victims of this police terror take center stage and we take the first steps toward people’s justice.
I want to emphasize that we are using this issue as the way to talk to our class, but this is not a single-issue campaign.
Right now, the government is in the process of bailing out the billionaire bankers after their house of cards began to collapse. That may send stocks up for a moment, but the crisis in the system remains. You do not need a crystal ball to see what it means for our communities: layoffs, cuts in benefits and services, more cops patrolling and occupying our streets.
This is going to be a busy six weeks. The first item on the to-do list is to collect that testimony. Do you know of any cases of police abuse? We need to know.
Can you help us collect the testimony? We want to be out over the next few weeks with flyers and clipboards gathering the testimony, and we need your help. Join the campaign that puts people over profits, that organizes in the streets and is dedicated to taking on the issues that the big business candidates will never touch.
