This article is my argument for establishing a new major political party of working people to replace--or at least to seriously compete with--the two existing major parties. I argue that the Democratic and Republican parties have outlived their usefulness

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We Need a New Political Party

Jerry Kann

March 21, 2013

The time has come to create a new major political party.

Anew major political party. An independent party big enough to compete with the two existing major parties, the Democrats and Republicans--and hopefully big enough, someday, to sweep them both out of power.

The two majorparties are not permanent fixtures of the landscape. They're not immortal. They're not in power as the result of some law of nature or an act of God. They're fallible and corruptible. And they've outlived their usefulness.

Both major parties are corrupt beyond redemption. They've been taking bribes from the Big Business bosses for so long that now they really only represent rich people and the big banks and corporations. Many Americans have been faithfully voting Democrat or Republican for years, or for decades, and they will be shocked at the suggestion that those two parties need to be broomed out of office. But in fact, their time has come. They've gotta go.

In order to save American democracy, we need thousands and thousands of honest, smart, articulate, angry people to run for public office. We need candidates who have never run before, but who have always known deep down that they have something valuable to contribute. We need new blood, and lots of it.

Why do these new candidates need a party? Well, why do workers need a union? Why do community activists need a club? Such organizations give people a way to divide up the work and to give every member a chance to participate. Sure, a person can run for office as a lone wolf, as a full independent. But that's a very hard way to do it, perhaps much harder than it needs to be for most people. Doing politics takes time and effort. And money. And organization. That's what a political party is for.

How many people could be brought together in such a party? Well, millions of people want a single-payer healthcare system that covers everybody, not one that excludes some folks and forces everybody else to buy health insurance from a private insurance company. Millions also want labor laws that make it easier to form unions -- to raise their standard of living and give them more power in the workplace. And certainly millions want to bring all the troops and mercenaries home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and even from many other U.S. bases all over the world that pointlessly stand guard against rival superpowers that don't exist any more. There are millions of Americans who agree on all these issues, but the Republicans and Democrats keep throwing up roadblocks. What's the obvious solution? Form our own party and do the job ourselves.

What's It All About?

Politics is about power. It's about competition just as much as it's about cooperation and compromise. Yes, it would be wonderful if all of us--rich and poor and middle-class alike--could converge in a gigantic group hug and agree to share our resources and responsibilities. But the world at present is dominated by a very small, fabulously wealthy group of people who want all the money and power for themselves. For a long time they only hoarded money, but for the past 20 or 30 years they have been hoarding political power as well. They have become a grave threat -- a near-mortal threat -- to American democracy.

But there is a way to save our democracy. We can do it by using the democratic process itself. Competing for power in elections --competing for the support of our fellow citizens and indeed for the support of people of goodwill all over the world--that is the instrument we can use to save democracy in the United States.

Nowadays it's fashionableto be cynical about electoral politics. That's not surprising, considering how completely the Democrats and Republicans have sold out to the big corporations. Many people seem to feel it's a waste of time even bothering to vote. But feeling discouraged and giving up altogether are two different things. There is no reason to give up, when there is such vastpotential for working people to take public power into their own hands. Ifthousands of activists take responsibility for their own future, if they finally graduate from being voters to being candidates, then we can transform and renew American democracy. And we can win. If we are the 99%, it shouldn't be any great trick to win elections by a simple majority of 50% plus one.

Some people -- particularly those in the Occupy movement -- seem to have given up on the electoral process entirely. We should abandon the old system, they argue--not so much overthrow it as leave it behind. We must not try to reform the old politics but instead simply ignore it and build new institutions. Also, many Occupy participants want to rely entirely on direct action--demonstrations, marches, and acts of civil disobedience -- rather than engage in party politics of any kind.

Maybe they're right. I'm proud to be a member of Occupy in New York Cityand in my own neighborhood of Astoria, Queens. I'm certainly willing to consider Occupy's non-electoral, "non-partisan" approach. After all, I can't knock success. Occupy Wall Street captured the attention of the world in the fall of 2011, before it was violently put down. And indeed the day may come when the corporate state becomes so powerful that civil disobedience will be our only possible way of fighting back.

But that day hasn't come yet. Direct action, as effective as it has been in many countries, is not our only possible means of resistance. We've hardly even begun to tap the potential for creating a large, dynamic, growing political party of working people. We'd be downright irresponsible not to try to bring that potential to life.

What's more, it's not very likely that the millionaires and billionaires who have taken over the government will be content to liveand let live. They've shown disrespect for the rule of law and contempt for the general welfare of the people. They attack us without provocation. They attack union members, journalists, and peaceful protestors. We can't just wish 'em away. We have to take action.

When Malcolm X toured Africa in 1964, he saw that several nations on that continent had won their freedom the same way the United States had won its own freedom from Great Britain: They made up their minds they wanted independencefrom their colonials overlords, and then they threw them out. They marshaled their own power. "Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression," said Malcolm upon his return to the U.S., "because power, real power, comes from conviction which produces action, uncompromising action."

Electoral politics is one means of asserting power. It is lawful. It is constitutional. It is non-violent. And it has the potential to be very, very, very -- well, powerful.

If people who call themselves "progressives" really do want progress, they have to take the struggle to the next level. They have to assert themselves. They have to compete with those very rich, pathologically greedy people who have bought up the services of both major parties. They can no longer rely on Democrats who have lied to them and betrayed them again and again and again. They have to declare their independenceand break free.

This Can't Wait

Back in October of 2000,Ralph Nader showed up at the first debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush. The event was put together by the Commission on Presidential Debates, aprivate organization formed by the Democratic and Republican national committees and a few big corporate sponsors. At that stage Nader, the Green Party candidate for President that year, was polling at around 4% or 5%, which translated to about 4 or 5 million supporters. (Democrats often complain that Nader "took away" votes from Al Gore, as if those votes somehow belonged to Gore and his supporters. But Democrats know deep down that by 2000 they had driven away many loyal voters by acting so much like Republicans that many people couldn't tell the difference any more.)

That night Nader had a ticket to a screening of the debate and an invitation for an interview with Fox News, both set to take place on the campus of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Yet when he tried to enter the compound, as a supposedly free man in a supposedly free country with every right to be there, he was approached by a representative of the Debate Commission and a Massachusetts state trooper--and threatened with arrest.

Nader and the Greens were using the democratic process to challenge the fat cats and to speak up for the 99%. What was the response? Police state tactics. A threat of arrest when no crime was being committed. All Nader hadto do was show up and the major parties and their corporate bosses freakedright out. They were terrified of an honest man daring to meddle in an election process that they obviously thought they owned.

The Greens had taken all that talk about "the land of the free" at face value and acted on it. Who stood in their way? An unelected, unaccountable, corporate-funded "commission" and a state trooper. The corporations and the cops. Sound familiar?

That was twelve years ago. We were already living in a corporate police state in 2000, but a lot of people must have been looking the other way, trying not to see what was already so plain and evident. They can't look away anymore. The actions of thecorporate elite are just too crazy, their tactics too crude, their guilt too obvious, and their wanton destruction of our country too hard to ignore.

The corporate bosses who run American politics do have a lot of money. But so what? We have 'em outnumbered by a staggering margin. They're just people, and they're vulnerable. And we can defeat them. And we can do it democratically. We just have to make up our minds that we can do it. That's the first step.

Authors Website: https://populistclubofnewyork.wordpress.com

Authors Bio:

Jerry Kann has made his living in New York City since the late 1980s in a variety of odd jobs--proofreader, copywriter, messenger, secretary--all while pursuing the very challenging avocation of independent politics. For years Kann's primary goal as an activist has been to help establish a new, independent political party of working people.

Kann joined Labor Party Advocates in 1994 and was active in the Labor Party until 2000. A registered but dissatisfied Democrat during the 1980s and '90s, Kann joined the Green Party in 2000 to volunteer for Ralph Nader's first full-out campaign for President. He worked as an independent contractor for Nader's 2004 campaign and volunteered for Nader in 2008. He was also a Nader delegate to the Green Party national convention in Milwaukee in 2004. As secretary and later as treasurer of the Green Party Office in Manhattan from 2002 to 2006, Kann worked with a very fine group of Green activists trying to build the Green Party in New York City.

Running as a Green in three campaigns for New York City Council in his home district of Astoria, Queens, Kann won 20 percent of the vote in 2003 on contributions of about $2500 (compared to the incumbent's $200,000). With an endorsement statement from Ralph Nader, Kann faced the same incumbent in 2005. In that campaign, Kann drew fire from both major parties, as his opponent ran on both Democratic and Republican ballot lines.

An early member of Greens for Democracy and Independence (under the leadership of Peter Camejo of California), Kann and others tried for several years to convince their fellow Green Party members to declare full independence from the Democratic Party. After a long fight on basic questions of the Greens' identity and long-term goals, Kann finally quit the Green Party in June 2009 and registered as a Populist, running again for City Council in 2009 and 2013.

During 2011 and 2012, Kann had an especially hard time finding anyone willing to publish an article (or even a letter) about his formal complaint against Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The complaint built a very solid case demonstrating that the mayor violated campaign finance law in his 2009 re-election campaign.

Kann remains ready, willing, and able to debate the essential question of independence and the urgent need for a new, militant, major political party in all public forums.