On the campaign road to revolution

Monica Moorehead, Workers World Party’s 2016 presidential candidate, hit the road for socialist revolution again with a campaign meeting in Syracuse, N.Y., on Oct. 23.

A serious and enthusiastic crowd of activists and organizers heard Moorehead speak on a wide range of issues, including WWP’s commitment to the Black Lives Matter movement; the connection between the fight to end white supremacy and the right to self-determination of oppressed peoples and nations; and the battle to end U.S. imperialist wars.

Moorehead emphasized that the path to socialism must be based on building broad solidarity and unity with struggles like #NoDAPL in Standing Rock, N.D.; the rebellions in Charlotte, N.C., Baltimore and Milwaukee against police terror; and the continuing struggle against deportations of migrant workers and families. She noted this solidarity must include fighting LGBTQ oppression, like the struggle against HB2, the anti-trans, anti-worker hate law in North Carolina.

“The current global economic crisis with fewer jobs,” said Moorehead, “is making youth of color more expendable and thus more susceptible to police murder and mass incarceration. That capitalist crisis is the basis for the growing police war against Black, Brown and Indigenous youth. We must fight to abolish the police as a repressive force.”

Moorehead stressed, “To respond, we need a unified left without sectarianism, and we need to build a progressive movement independent of any bourgeois political party.”

An in-depth, two-hour discussion then followed among the multinational attendees, most in their twenties and thirties, where participants both voiced their concerns and thoughtfully explored strategy and theory on how to move forward.

Present were members of a number of organizations, including the local Black Lives Matter group, the Palestine Solidarity Collective, the Radical Education Collective and the Workers’ Center of Central New York. Those in the discussion came not only from the U.S., but also had roots in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, India, Palestine, Puerto Rico, Haiti and other Caribbean nations.

Key organizers were there from the General Body’s militant 2014 occupation of Syracuse University’s administration building. Also participating were a United Auto Workers Local 774 member leading the struggle against racism at his GM plant near Buffalo; and a teacher active in the recent big union win by the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, whose united full-time faculty and adjuncts struck at 14 colleges.

The Moorehead/Lilly WWP presidential and vice presidential candidates have obtained official status as write-in candidates on New York state ballots in the Nov. 8 general election.