Liberation News Voter Recommendations for President

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PRESIDENT: With the two main corporate politicians being pro-war, we recommend that you vote against the war and for healthcare, jobs, and housing through socialism. Listed are the three socialist candidates that have taken the position of immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Liberation News is giving critical support to these campaigns. They are:

JOHN PARKER and TERESA GUITIERREZ of the WORKERS WORLD PARTY (WWP) are recommended in the states where they are on the ballot. These are Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The Workers World Party with International Answer has been in the leadership of organizing the largest protests against the U.S. war against Iraq.

BILL VAN AUKEN and JIM LAWRENCE of the SOCIALIST EQUALITY PARTY (SEP) are on the ballot in Colorado, Iowa, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Washington. They are recommended in those states.

ROGER COLERO and ARRIN HAWKINS of the SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY (SWP), with the alternate SWP candidates of JAMES HARRIS and Arrin Hawkins, are also recommended in the states where they are on the ballot. They are on the ballot in Washington D.C., Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Utah, Washington, Minnesota, Nebraska, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

The nominally socialist Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) as well as the Socialist Party (SP) are also running candidates for president, but Liberation News is not giving them any support.

PFP candidate Leonard Peltier has taken the position in regards to Iraq of “US out, UN in.” Today the UN is occupying the Island of Haiti as part of a US coup against the democratically elected president. For the people of Haiti there is no advantage to being occupied by UN troops rather than US troops. The California State Chair of the Peace and Freedom Party defends this position claiming that sending the UN in doesn’t necessarily mean sending in troops and points out that the Peace and Freedom Party has no position against UN occupations.

Well, Liberation News does have a clear position against UN occupations. UN troops for military occupations, euphemistically called peacekeepers, are there to carry out the will of US imperialism and subvert national sovereignty. From the five million killed by the UN/US aggression against Korea in the 1950s to the 1.5 million Iraqis murdered by UN/US economic sanctions against Iraq, to the present UN/US subversion of democracy in Haiti, the UN is an imperialist tool used in the interest of the powerful capitalist countries around the world.

While Liberation News says that Leonard Peltier was framed and does not belong in prison, we do not support his campaign for president.

Liberation News also opposes the campaign of Socialist Party Candidate Walt Brown. Walt Brown stated in a recent interview, “Obviously, if anyone is going to come online with nuclear weapons, we need to be aggressive, but I would rule out a preemptive strike. You just do a blockade, like we did with Cuba during the Missile Crisis.”

A socialist understanding, however, begins with the right of nations to self-determination, which includes their right to defend their national sovereignty from U.S. imperialism. This is an important lesson of U.S. aggression in Iraq: had the Iraqis not been disarmed by the U.N. inspectors and starvation blockade that killed 1.5 million people there would be better chances that they would not be suffering the way they are now.

It is a further indication of the kind of anti-socialist thinking going on in the leadership of the Peace and Freedom Party that Walt Brown was the other candidate they put on the ballot in for the PFP’s primary elections, running statements by both Walt Brown and Leonard Peltier in their newspaper, the Partisan.

Liberation News also opposes the presidential candidacy of Ralph Nader on the basis that he does not call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

While Green Party Candidate David Cobb does call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, the Green Party itself is a petty bourgeois capitalist party, incapable of ruling in the interests of the working class. This fact is painfully clear in places like Santa Cruz where they have been elected. In this City Green Party City Councilperson Tim Fitzmaurice and the Democrats that the Green Party supports administer over austerity against social programs while defending the police budget and voting for laws that call for police harassment of the homeless.

In states where there are no socialist candidates on the ballot Liberation News suggests writing in JOHN PARKER and TERESA GUITIERREZ of the WORKERS WORLD PARTY (WWP) for the leadership role they have played in the anti-war movement.