Support Cindy Sheehan For Representative of Congressional District 8

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While the war in Iraq is now costing billions of dollars per month, here at home teachers and health care workers, as well as many other state and city workers, are being laid off due to insufficient funds.  And although the Democrats climbed onto the antiwar bandwagon while campaigning during the last election cycle, they immediately jumped off once they were elected and in control of both houses of Congress.  Since then, they have passed every proposed budget to fund the war, led by Democratic Party Representative and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi whom Cindy Sheehan seeks to replace.

In contrast, Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in the war, has adopted a principled and unwavering antiwar position.  She has worked tirelessly to build a strong and united antiwar movement in the face of unrelenting and often vicious attacks by the media. She gave her full support to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) workers’ May Day strike action in which thousands of West Coast dock workers protested the war with an eight-hour work stoppage.  And at a recent immigrant rights rally in San Francisco she extended support to some of the most exploited in our society by demanding unconditional amnesty for all undocumented workers.

We believe the Sheehan campaign deserves the support of working people.  While the Democrats surround themselves with corporate bigwigs but campaign in rural diners, as if to suggest they are just ordinary folk like us, Sheehan is a working class mother who sincerely wants the war to end.  By linking up with unions and the most exploited, she is moving in the direction of helping to build a working class movement with the power to stop the war.

War does not result from unenlightened or “bad” policies or politicians but from the nature of capitalism itself.  Capitalism has always plunged humanity into war.  Politicians in each country, representing powerful business interests, pursue raw materials, markets and cheap labor around the world.  In the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism, politicians know that if “their” country’s capitalists do not secure crucial raw materials by any means necessary, then the capitalists in other countries will seize them for themselves.  For them, it is all about the pursuit of profits for the few, no matter what the consequences are for the rest of us.  Consequently, the Democratic Party’s commitment to capitalism will forever drag us into war.  Its record is clear: Truman into Korea, Kennedy and Johnson into Vietnam, and Clinton into Yugoslavia (Clinton also bombed Sudan and Afghanistan).

We believe that society should be democratically organized to improve the quality of life of the majority. In other words, we are fighting for a new kind of society: socialism. Such a society would mean the end of the exploitation of one person by another in the pursuit of profits, and would instead be based on the principle that each individual’s interests are best served when everyone’s interests are served.  But such a goal can only be achieved if the majority of society’s members are in political and economic control.  This means that all major decisions affecting society must result from a free and open discussion among all its members, where all relevant information is available and where the outcome is determined by a democratic vote. Only in this way can we democratically decide how best to use society’s resources in the interests of all.

The Workers International League is in favor of a mass party of labor based on the unions to represent the interests of the working class majority of American society. However, as such a party has not yet been formed, campaigns such as Sheehan’s give voters a concrete example of what is possible outside the narrow confines of the Republicans and Democrats, of the kinds of independent political campaigns that can be run in order to mobilize anti-war forces, the labor movement, immigrant and Black workers, etc. Cindy Sheehan’s campaign is a step in this direction.

A vote for Cindy Sheehan is a way of saying that we are against U.S. intervention in the Middle East, Latin America, and around the world. It is a way of saying that we are against the military budget and the war on workers at home and abroad. It is a way of saying: “Stop the War! Bring the Troops Home now!” It is a way of saying that we do not support either of the two parties of big business, and that we need a political alternative of, by, and for the working class majority. It is a way for us to demand universal health care and education. It is a way of demanding that we invest heavily in rebuilding the Gulf Coast, the inner cities, and our crumbling infrastructure. It is a way of saying that we want quality union jobs at a living wage for all. This is why we call on  workers and youth in District 8 to vote for Cindy Sheehan. Join the WIL in the struggle for a better world!