From Solidarity member and New Politics editor Dan La Botz: The American political system, so highly polarized between conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats, has experienced in the last year some interesting changes on the left-hand margin of the national political scene. From Bill de Blasio’s victory in the mayoral election in New York City, to Kshama Sawant’s winning of a city council seat in Seattle, from the late Chokwe Lumumba’s popularly-based campaign in Jackson, Mississippi, to self-described socialist Bernie Sanders’ talk of a run for the presidency, something new appears to be happening. Independent politics and socialist party campaigns, so long marginal to American political life and from discussion in the media, seem to be back on the radar again. This is all the more remarkable given our terrible election laws that make it so difficult in so many states to get parties and candidates on the ballot... Several questions are raised by these cases: Has the erosion of America’s economic and political system reached the point that significant numbers of Americans are willing to consider new and possibly radical alternatives? Are the labor and social movements strong enough to push forward and sustain political movements, organizations, and candidates? Are we witnessing the driving of a left political wedge into the country’s fundamentally conservative two-party system? Or are the victories we have seen and are likely to see more dependent on charismatic candidates, local conditions, special circumstances, and non-partisan races than on the economic crisis and social movements? Perhaps most important, does the election of candidates on the left actually encourage the growth and strengthening of social movements, so that we enter into a virtuous cycle of movements leading to political campaigns which in turn build the movements? The goal, after all, is to build a working class mass movement that can challenge fundamentally the existing economic and political system.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 20:00:02 +0000
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