Dear Constituents of Michigan’s 53rd State House
District, I’m running in 2008 as a Socialist Party/Green Party
candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives to give our state’s working
people a seat in the State Legislature. Since I last ran for State
Representative in 2006, the problems we face from corporate rule of our state’s
economy and government have only intensified. While our state’s job
losses and home foreclosures are at record highs, attacks on wages and living
standards are rising across all industries, social services continue to starve
for funding, and quality health care has become increasingly inaccessible,
neither the Democratic Party’s victories in the U.S. Congress nor our state’s
House of Representatives have led to any meaningful progress in the
extraordinary struggles we now collectively face. Concurrently, our state
legislature has failed to formally voice any opposition whatsoever to the dire
effects of imperialist war on workers here and overseas or the escalating attacks
on our most fundamental civil liberties Serving as no exception to this disastrous betrayal by our
elected representatives has been our freshman Democratic State Representative
Rebekah Warren, whose most significant accomplishment thus far has been the
exponential increase in corporate campaign funding she’s received. Not only has
Warren failed to introduce
legislation on almost any of the marginally progressive demands she promised
us, but has also voted to fully fund corporate welfare and the prison-industrial complex. With tens of thousands in contributions from the
leading corporations in the banking, energy, automotive, insurance, timber,
retail, and corporate lobbying industries, it comes as no surprise that her
actions in the State Legislature have been narrowed to the interests of those
who financed her way to the Capitol.
In 2006, our campaign made history. Our campaign was the first, outside of the Democratic and Republican parties, to qualify for the ballot for 53rd District State Representative since 1998 and the first to qualify for the general election ballot by petition for that office in over two decades. More historic, however, was the fact that eight-hundred and forty-seven Ann Arbor voters stood up to the corporate parties in the last election and cast their ballots for democratic socialist representation in the State Legislature. More Michigan voters today, than at any time in recent history, are coming to realize that the most fundamental divide in present social and political life is between those who work for a living and those who own for a living. The consequences of such an obsolete system are not only ever-increasing social inequality and exploitation of our labor, but a society in which the vast majority of the power structure is never up for election, and what little democracy exists in the political system is absent in the economy and the workplace. With your support, votes, and contributions, we can build the movement to pull the roots that define the present path. Another Michigan is possible!
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THE SOCIALIST
PARTY strives to establish a radical democracy that places peoples’ lives under
their own control - a non racist, classless, feminist, non-heterosexist socialist society in which working people own and control the means of production
and distribution, through democratically-controlled committees and assemblies;
where full employment is realized for everyone who wants to work; where workers
have the right to form unions freely, and to strike and engage in other forms
of job actions; and where the production of society is used for the benefit of
all humanity, not for the private profit of a few. We believe socialism and
democracy are one and indivisible. The
working class is in a key and central position to fight back against
the ruling capitalist class and its power. The working class is the
major force worldwide that can lead the way to a socialist future – to
a real radical democracy from below.
The
Socialist Party fights for progressive changes compatible with a socialist
future. We support militant working class struggles and electoral action,
independent of the capitalist-controlled two-party system, to present socialist
alternatives. We strive for democratic social revolutions — radical and
fundamental changes in the structure and nature of economic, political and
social relations — to abolish the power now exercised by the few who control
the economy and the government. The Socialist Party is a democratic,
multi-tendency organization, with structure and practices visible and
accessible to all members. Join Today
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GREEN PARTY: Ten Key Values: 1. Ecological Wisdom 2. Social Justice 3. Grassroots Democracy 4. Nonviolence 5. Decentralization 6. Community-Based Economics 7. Feminism 8. Respect for Diversity 9. Personal and Global Responsibility 10. Future Focus. Join Today
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