A revised form of this political program will be distributed to participants at the Peace And Freedom Party meeting to be held at 1:30 PM at the Louden Nelson Center on Saturday Dec. 7th. It will then be discussed for ratification at a subsequent meeting.


Pseudo-Progressivism and Why We Need the Peace and Freedom Party In Santa Cruz

By STEVE ARGUE
A City Council resolution stating opposition to the coming war in Iraq. Another opposing the so-called “USA Patriot Act”. A symbolic one day City Council medical marijuana give-away opposing a recent DEA raid outside of the city. Another City Council resolution supporting framed political journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal.

These are all acts by the Santa Cruz City Council that the Peace and Freedom Party supports, but we do not support the politicians who passed them. Why?

All are symbolic resolutions and actions that do not impact the daily workings of the federal government, capitalist system, or local police state. Yet they do create the illusion that the progressive movement has control of the city government in Santa Cruz. It is with the left cover of this illusion that the city government carries out its pro-police state, anti-renter, anti-working class, anti-free speech, anti-medical marijuana, and anti-homeless agenda locally.

To be elected in Santa Cruz, city council candidates generally must flash some progressive credentials to gain office. Councilmember Cynthia Matthews has a legitimate progressive credential as a paid administrator for Planned Parenthood, yet she opposes the right of an important feminist voice, Free Radio Santa Cruz, to even be on the air. Councilmember Tim Fitzmaurice is a member of the Green Party, although he didn’t get their endorsement in the 2002 election. Mark Primack touts his past involvement in saving the green belt, while presently being heavily financed by large developers. Scott Kennedy is involved in running the Resource Center for Non-Violence, yet he supports police violence by his police in Santa Cruz. Emily Reilly claims she “bakes good things” and pays her workers a living wage, a claim that has been refuted by her workers. Ed Porter got the endorsement of the Green Party by promising to overturn the city’s anti-homeless sleeping ban, a promise he has not kept. Councilmember Mike Rotkin touts the false claim that he is a socialist, while calling those who actually advocate socialism unrealistic idealists.

While there are many activists who prefer to jump on the band-wagon of the city government’s progressive illusions to give their own cause the mantel of governmental legitimacy, the Peace and Freedom Party points out that this mode of operation is counter productive. Groups such as Peddlers Express, unions, and SCAN alienate themselves from their true allies by supporting status quo politicians who do not really support their causes.

In addition to these groups a rogue “Central Committee” of the Peace and Freedom Party in Santa Cruz headed by Mike and Maurine Smith has a history of endorsing just about every pseudo-progressive politician that has been elected to the Santa Cruz City Council. This rogue “Central Committee” has no relationship with the state office of the Peace and Freedom Party and conducts its affairs without any democratic control from the membership. The legitimate Santa Cruz Peace and Freedom Party will be meeting at 1:30 PM on Saturday December 7th at the Louden Nelson Center where all registered members of the Peace and Freedom Party as well as those unable to vote in government elections will have a vote.

The key to understanding the difference between pseudo-progressive politics and the revolutionary program of the Peace and Freedom Party is to understand the difference between words and deeds. This principle holds true in examining the policies of national and state Democrats and Republicans just as it does in examining the local politics of the Democrats and the Green who hold office.

A good example would be the policies of Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton appeared to many who listened to his words and looked at the endorsements he got from many unions and gay rights groups to be pro-union and pro-human rights for gays. Yet in reality Clinton gave gays the “don’t ask don’t tell policy” of the military, which actually led to more discrimination of gays in the military. Clinton also stepped in against workers who were out on strike, hurting workers in favor of corporate profits. In addition Clinton was carrying out wars across globe from the bombing of Yugoslavia to giving billions of dollars in military aid to the death squad government of Colombia. He starved over a million Iraqi children through an economic blockade, ended welfare as we knew it, weakened the Endangered Species Act, let political prisoners such as Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal rot in prison, proposed a health insurance bail out while opposing real health care solutions such as single payer or national health care, etc.

Locally members of that same Democrat Party, and one Green, run the city government. The level of hypocrisy that comes from these people is very high, but almost never reported in corporate newspapers such as the Sentinel, Mercury News, Metro, or Good Times. For instance there were numerous articles on the medical marijuana give-away at city hall, yet there were no articles that pointed out that this symbolic act was illegal according to the zoning ordinance introduced by Mike Rotkin and Tim Fitzmaurice and passed by the city council. That zoning ordinance outlawed medical marijuana dispensaries in almost all of Santa Cruz and shut down the one dispensary in the city on Seabright Avenue. Yet these same politicians used the DEA raid as an opportunity to create a photo-op on an issue important to the majority of Santa Cruz voters.

This is no small question. Through this city law the pseudo-progressive city council makes the attainment of needed medicine for patients with glaucoma, cancer, AIDS, and epilepsy much more difficult and illegal.

The complicity of the corporate media in portraying anti-medical marijuana politicians as pro-medical marijuana is one example showing how the backing of the corporate establishment keeps these pseudo-progressives in power. It also shows the need for more people to be part of and rely more on alternative media such as Free Radio Santa Cruz (96.3 FM), the Green Press in the Comic News, Liberation News, the Organizer, Street Spirit, and the Partisan. In addition, Santa Cruz Indy Media is often a good source for information although they could also use some policies against the direct posting of articles from the corporate papers. It should also be a goal of the local Peace & Freedom Party to print and distribute an alternative to the lies of the corporate media as well.

A key issue in Santa Cruz is where the councilmembers stand on homelessness and the homeless. Presently there is a sleeping ban in Santa Cruz that makes the harmless act of sleeping illegal for the homeless whether they are outside, in a tent, or in a vehicle. Covering up with a blanket is another crime. The Santa Cruz Peace and Freedom Party sees this as a key issue, not just because the homeless shouldn’t be doubly victimized for their situation of poverty, but also because anyone in government who can not get this issue right won’t get anything else right either.

The newly inaugurated city council is made up of politicians that are either openly for the anti-homeless sleeping law or who have lied about it. Ed Porter, a local Democrat Party chair, got the endorsement of the Green Party in the 2000 elections by putting in writing that he would work to end the sleeping ban if he was elected. Porter lied. He has not even attempted to do anything of the sort, but his lie helped get him elected. Tim Fitzmaurice, when confronted during a candidate’s forum about his vote for the sleeping ban openly lied about his vote and told the UCSC students that he had not voted for it. Again the corporate media never reported this easily proven lie regarding a matter of public record.

Mike Rotkin, on the other hand, is openly pro-sleeping ban. He subscribes to the theory that if Santa Cruz doesn’t abuse the homeless all of the homeless in the country will want to come here. This is a doubtful theory. Most of the homeless are looking for a way to get back on their feet and are unlikely to want to move to the most expensive city in the country. Obviously making sleep illegal does nothing towards housing people. Not allowing people to sleep outside when they have nowhere else to go is cruel, anti-working class, and anti-socialist.

While those who defend the capitalist system simply see the homeless as failures, we in the Peace & Freedom Party see homelessness as a failure of capitalism. Studies have made it clear that it is the shortage of affordable housing and the low wages paid to much of the working class that are the two largest causes of homelessness in America. There can be little doubt that mental illness, alienation, and drug and alcohol addiction are also major contributors to homelessness. We also see poor people homeless because of their desire to create art, travel, or who have difficulty participating in a society that is often so regimented and unjust.

The Peace & Freedom Party does not see the homeless as some kind of pest infestation to be jailed, driven out of town, or driven off the earth. We instead see the homeless as human beings who should all have housing, access to good paying meaningful jobs, as well as needed social services. Thus our political program addresses both ways to cure homelessness and opposes laws that punish people for having no home.

In terms of calling for emergency relief for the homeless we advocate an end to the sleeping ban as well as calling for much better provisions for emergency shelter and camping. We demand needed sanitation that will benefit both the homeless and the housed alike. This sanitation includes bringing back all of the port-a-potties that the city government has shut down as well as adding more to other locations. In addition, restaurants should be forced open restrooms that they have illegally shut down. Dumpsters should be provided in emergency camping areas, along with clean up crews, and enforcement of legitimate littering laws both against the homeless and the housed who have purposely sabotaged safe sleeping zones by dumping their garbage at them.

A combination of hatred for the homeless on one hand and ignorance or apathy on the other, combined with a large dose of lies from the corporate media and the status quo politicians keeps the Santa Cruz anti-homeless politicians in power. Yet instead of playing into anti-homeless prejudices amongst the electorate and the local power brokers the Peace & Freedom Party seeks to educate the electorate about some of the key issues involved in the Santa Cruz anti-homeless laws and seeks to break the power of the current king makers.

These principles hold true of the Peace & Freedom Party on every issue. The Peace & Freedom Party does not adjust our principles according to what could obviously get us elected by getting us more backing in the corporate media, more funding for our campaigns, and fewer struggles with the prejudices of the electorate.

In advocating solutions we do not gloss over and ignore the basic economic divisions in society, nor do we pretend we can make everyone happy. In America there are workers and there are bosses. There are also renters and there are landlords. While there are other classes in the middle, these are the most basic economic divisions; they are, in short, the division between the exploiters and the exploited. Locally the exploiters maintain control with their money, media, pseudo-progressive politicians, police, judges, jails, etc

The relationship between renters and landlords is much like the feudal relations where serfs were forced to slave for their landlords. In Santa Cruz low-income workers are forced to turn the majority of our income over to landlords who often use the money to do things like buy more property or party hard off of our labor. The pseudo-progressive government’s sleeping ban makes the very act of sleeping after not paying our feudal landlords their monthly tribute, illegal. In addition the city government does not address the issues of renters.

An issue that is not popular with the landlords and their lackeys in the city government is the need for rent control. In Santa Cruz a renter paying $800 a month can have their rent raised by $200 dollars and legally there is nothing the renter can do about it. Obviously this causes hardship for renters and can even cause homelessness. In places like Berkeley that have rent control these types of landlord abuses are not allowed.

In Santa Cruz the Peace and Freedom Party and the left wing Green Party candidates, Steve Argue and Thomas Leavitt, were the only candidates in the 2002 elections to address the need to lower the cost of rent in a meaningful way. Both advocated the easing of ordinances that restrict the building of high density housing for the building of low-income rental units. This would help to ease the housing shortage and bring down the cost of rent. Higher density housing within the city also begins to answer problems of urban sprawl and makes transportation alternatives to cars such as bikes and public transportation more efficient. Yet there are many landlords and other homeowners who don’t want high-density housing or poor people in their neighborhoods. These are the best places to build.

While Peace and Freedom Party calls for rent control, more low income housing, and an end to the sleeping ban as ways to reduce the abuses meted out to the poor we also say that the greedy landlords should have their property expropriated in a worker's revolution that redistributes the ownership of housing and production while guaranteeing the political rights of those who do not take up arms against the new society. Through such a revolution we can guarantee that all will be housed, have medical care, free education including higher education, and saner environmental policies based on needs rather than greed. We see such a long-term program as realistic because we know that the capitalist system goes through massive convulsions of economic crisis and war that can cause the kind of political turmoil where a real change in society can take place.

While high rent is the biggest problem facing low-income renters and the homeless it is also the biggest problem facing downtown merchants. Yet instead of blaming the greedy landlords many of the downtown merchants, coupled with the corporate media and their errand boys in city government, are scapegoating the poor for their problems.

Instead of passing rent control the current City Council has passed a new series of laws for the downtown area that severely limit where musicians, other street performers, political tablers, and panhandlers can do what they do. These new laws, introduced by Ed Porter and Emily Reilly, are strongly opposed by the Peace and Freedom Party. In addition we oppose a new proposal by Emily Reilly to hold strong police discretions over the heads of street performers through licensing. We instead call for the complete repeal of all of the “downtown ordinances” passed by the city council in 1994 and 2002.

Obviously instead of these laws against the poor, activists, and street performers we need rent control and more low-income housing. We also need higher wages. On this issue we once again run into the hypocrisy of the local pseudo-progressive government.

One of the bragging points of the pseudo-progressive incumbents in the last election was their passing of the so-called living wage ordinance in the year 2000. This ordinance was one of the weakest in the nation, effecting only about 10 workers with a one-dollar raise. About 600 part time workers are not covered by this ordinance. Nor are workers who work for companies that do work that is contracted out by the city or those who work for non-profits that are funded by the city.

The Peace & Freedom Party calls for a stronger living wage that actually has an impact on the majority of low wage workers that work for the city. Cutting the six digit salaries of top administrators such as the city manager, the chief of police, and the head of the Re-Development agency as well as others could pay this for.

In addition the Peace and Freedom Party also call for a doubling of the minimum wage and indexing it with inflation through legislation on the state and national level. All workers deserve a minimum living wage much higher than the current minimum wage. This is another issue where we side with the exploited over the exploiters, the workers over employers.

While the capitalists insist that it is their God given right to exploit workers, and claim that they give workers jobs, the Peace & Freedom Party points out that without the capitalist system there would be no capitalists to expropriate a large portion of our labor power in the form of profits. Likewise we support the labor movement and other movements in every attempt to rest a larger share of the fruits of our labor from the parasitic capitalist class.

The disagreements the Peace and Freedom Party has with the labor movement stem from our desire to strengthen the labor movement and its legitimate causes. To these ends we are strong advocates of union democracy and see the rank and file of the union, not its leadership, as the true union. On this point we support the strikes of the union membership, whether officially sanctioned by the leadership or not. This includes the Santa Cruz bus driver’s wildcat strike of 1998. We also condemn the actions of Mike Rotkin and Scott Kennedy in crossing that picket line to fuel busses as scabs (this was witnessed by Nora Hockman, a local leader of the SEIU). Likewise we condemn the decision by leaders in the bus drivers union (UTU) to endorse scab Mike Rotkin in the most recent election.

The Peace and Freedom Party in fact calls for an entirely different electoral strategy than is currently pursued by almost every union. It is our position that workers gain nothing from their unions endorsing Democrats and pseudo-progressives. We also think that the union dues that the leadership squanders on these campaigns would be better spent on putting together a much stronger strike fund to directly strengthen the union’s ability to strike and by spending money on legitimate progressive and pro-union candidates from the Peace and Freedom Party, the left-wing of the Green Party, and the Labor Party. Such support could make a huge difference in whether or not truly progressive and truly pro-union candidates get elected.

Naturally we encourage union members with our perspectives to challenge union leaders with status quo perspectives and to run for union offices themselves or find other ways to change their unions such as through setting up organizing committees or by switching unions. We oppose any attempt by those trying to organize a democratic union at bringing in the government to clean house for them. This is like the fox guarding the hen house and has had a disastrous effect on the Teamsters Union where President Ron Carey was removed from the leadership of the union by the federal government for leading the successful UPS strike in 1997.

Obviously America’s capitalist government is not on the side of workers and unions. This is true of both the Democrats and Republicans and is true on many different levels. Both Clinton and Bush have intervened against workers out on strike and thus helped the corporations that the workers were fighting against. Likewise across the country local police forces, and even the National Guard, are often used against striking workers. Which side they are on is made clear by whom they club, pepper spray, and arrest. It is the workers they brutalize. They never carry out these kinds of actions against the bosses or the scabs.

The Peace & Freedom Party understands that the police are an armed force whose main purpose in capitalist America is to maintain an unjust system and defend the wealthy that run it. As such the police carry out the enforcement of unjust laws against the poor, activists, workers, renters, people of color, and anyone else who is in some way in the crosshairs of the exploiters. In other cases these groups are sometimes framed as well.

The police in Santa Cruz routinely violate the rights of the poor and of political activists. Any progressive program for the city of Santa Cruz has to directly challenge this status quo. The Peace and Freedom Party points out that it is not enough to just repeal anti-poor laws here, although that would be a good beginning. We also point out that drastic changes need to be made in the police department. These changes would start with firing the current Chief of police, and could also include strengthening the Citizen’s Police Review Board to give it the strength to hire and fire officers.

While the police are the local military force defending the propertied and wealthy against the common people, the US military serves the same cause on a world scale. The Peace and Freedom Party stands in opposition to both the Democrats and Republicans as parties of war.

Locally Congressman Sam Farr (D) is the bomber of Belgrade and supporter of the death squad government of Colombia, who most recently voted for the $355 billion military appropriations that will be used to terrorize the people of the entire world, including Iraq. Dianne Feinstein, Dubya Bush, Mike Honda, and Anna Eshoo should also be exposed for their even more direct support for war with Iraq. The Peace and Freedom Party seeks action so that all of these politicians should pay a political price for their pro-war stand.

There are some in the anti-war movement who want to pressure Farr to take a more active approach in stopping the war with Iraq. Yet a look at Farr's statements regarding this war shows that he is not really opposed to war with Iraq, but instead has tactical differences regarding the U.S. going it alone and other lame concerns that represent an actual interest in a more effective US imperialist war policy the world over. His vote for the massive military appropriations represents this common interest Farr has with Bush, big oil, and the arms industry. Farr's differences with Bush stem from his knowledge that this war may cause massive unrest, foreign and domestic, that may make it more difficult for the US to carry out its evil imperialist wars and exploitation on the people of the world. With such motivations there is no reason to think Farr will mobilize and educate people against this war.

What does Farr have to say to the people on this issue anyway? Sam Farr has not spoken out against the constant bombing of Iraq that has occurred since the first US attack on Iraq in the early 1990s. He has not spoken out against the US imposed economic sanctions that have starved about 1.5 million Iraqi children. Nor has Farr opposed the deadly use of radio-active waste in the production of US weapons of mass destruction that were used both in Yugoslavia and on Iraq poisoning the inhabitants of those countries as well as 100,000 "Gulf War Syndrome" US soldiers.

Those who want an authentic anti-war movement should expect to have to organize it and to lead it yourselves. Expecting Democrats to do it is like expecting a mule to quack like a duck.

In my studies of history I've seen three effective ways to end a war. 1. Is when the soldiers refuse to fight. This is the way that the long and persistent anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s finally educated the soldiers and ended the war in Vietnam. 2. If the working class strikes and refuses to participate in building or shipping the armaments. A very effective strike that shut down Seattle Washington during the early days of the Russian revolution physically stopped the sending of war supplies and helped force the US to pull its troops out of the young Soviet Union. 3. A third way will be through a revolution of the people. If we succeed in doing any of the first two types of action we may not be too far from carrying out the third. All three forms of direct action will take the building of strong organizations independent of the Democrats and Republicans.

The Peace And Freedom Party supports any and all actions that will help build the kind of consciousness among the people that could one day make the three kinds of effective direct action by the people possible. Illusions in warmongers like Sam Farr's potential to organize an anti-war movement are an obstacle to effective action. Instead of talking to Sam Farr's staff we are better off holding rallies and distributing literature to the people. Reaching GIs and young people of draft or recruitment age is critical. The Farrs and Bushes of the world will never be reached by our moral arguments. Like Nixon, however, they will notice if soldiers refuse to fight.

With all this said, I hope that Sam Farr does organize a town hall meeting so that those of us in the Peace and Freedom Party can be there to urge people to break with illusions in the twin parties of war that rule America and to register to vote with the Peace and Freedom Party. The Peace and Freedom Party is a party that has opposed every US war since it was founded in 1967 and actively calls for the vigorous building of an effective anti-war movement. We encourage people who think that this kind of thinking makes sense to:

1. Register with the Peace and Freedom Party, we are now only 4,000 registrants away from getting back on the state ballot.

2. You can also come to our next meeting at the Louden Nelson Center on Saturday December 7th at 1:30 PM.

3. In addition we encourage people to attend the Peace Friday demonstrations held every Friday at Ocean and Water Streets at 5:00 PM

4. Build and attend the national actions that have been set for January in San Francisco and Washington DC. Tens of thousands will converge in San Francisco & Washington DC January 18, 2003 for a MASS DEMONSTRATION and in Washington on Jan. 19 for the Convening of the GRASSROOTS PEACE CONGRESS

5. Post your own ideas and actions. All power to the people!

Join us! Instead of war and injustice we need a political party that represents the needs of working class people.