Workers World Party salutes Egyptian socialists

The following is from a Workers World Party solidarity statement given by Joyce Chediac in Cairo on June 18 to the founding conference of the Egyptian Socialist Party.

Joyce Chediac

On behalf of Workers World Party, I wish to extend warmest salutations to the Egyptian Socialist Party at this truly historic occasion of your founding. I also bring greetings from the International Action Center.

The Egyptian people have stepped onto the stage of history, and your struggle has inspired the world. Your example showed U.S. workers how people’s power can make change.

On Feb. 15 in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, when you were still in Tahrir Square, the government launched an all-out attack on trade unions in the public sector. Hundreds of thousands of trade unionists and their supporters — students, farmers, retirees — took to the streets and occupied the Capitol for three weeks.

It was your example that gave Wisconsin workers and youth courage in their own strength. Wisconsin workers stood in the snow carrying signs that read, “Fight like an Egyptian.” This action reinvigorated the trade union movement from the bottom up.

Watching the news, people in Wisconsin saw people in Tahrir Square carrying signs in solidarity with them. People in Egypt went online and ordered pizza to feed the Wisconsin worker/youth encampment.

For three decades, U.S. aid to Egypt, now standing at $2 billion a year, has gone to the rich and to the military establishment, while neoliberal policies imposed by Wall Street banks cause 40 percent of your population to live on $2 a day.

Workers in the U.S. gain nothing from strengthening an Egyptian military meant to protect U.S. oil company profits and undermine the Palestinians’ right to return.

Wall Street banks now seek to impose on U.S. workers the same neoliberal policies they have imposed on Egypt. In the U.S. less than 1 percent of the population owns 40 percent of the wealth. They want us to live on $2 a day, too.

Workers in the U.S. and Egypt struggle against the same system of injustice and repression. We have a common enemy — U.S. imperialism and all its agents around the world.

We demand that U.S. imperialism get out of Egypt, the Middle East and Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq and that the U.S. and NATO stop bombing Libya. We demand a stop to all U.S. economic, military and political intervention in Egypt, overt and covert. We support the right of the people of Egypt and the entire region to determine their own lives free from imperialist intervention. Let any U.S. aid to Egypt come in the form of reparations, to be administered by people’s committees.

As a working class party in the U.S., we share your socialist perspective. The Egyptian people have helped start something in the U.S. In turn, we hope to build a serious class struggle which would be of assistance to struggles worldwide.

Down with imperialism, down with capitalism! Long live the solidarity between Egyptian and U.S. workers!