HOME  E-DEMOCRACY 98  E-DEBATE WEB MN-FORUM

Thomas Fiske      Response 5

Question 5: Please describe the one issue that is the single most important reason you chose to run for office?

The most important reason I decided to run for public
office is to advance the independent organization of
working people on a political level in this country. In
the new strikes and other struggles that are occurring,
working people are beginning to learn that by acting
together we have social power. We are beginning to
discover that we have common class interests and the
value of solidarity.

The Socialist Workers campaign and its youth supporters,
the Young Socialists, are part of this developing
fightback. We campaign to help organize and mobilize
working people and all those struggling for social
justice to use effectively our numbers, our role in the
economy and our capacities for political thought and
solidarity.

We speak for the interests of working people and all the
oppressed. We urge working people to reject the
reactionary nationalism of the U.S. rulers which holds
that working people in the United States have a common
"national interest" with the wealthy U.S. rulers.

The struggles of today by workers, farmers, youth, and
oppressed nationalities run into political obstacles
such as the use of court injunctions, frame-ups and the
passing of reactionary anti-labor laws by treacherous
capitalist politicians. The working class needs an
independent political movement of its own, one that
advances the interests of working people and all the
oppressed. Such a movement will develop an independent
working class political power counter to the political
power of the capitalists exercised through their
domination of the Republican and Democratic parties. The
political fights to defend working people organized by
such an independent political movement will point in the
direction of the struggle for a workers’ and farmers’
government -- a struggle for a government of, by and for
the working people.