Episodes
Saturday Oct 11, 2014
Alternative Visions - The Way to Independent Political Action: Part 1 - 10/11/14
Saturday Oct 11, 2014
Saturday Oct 11, 2014
Jack Rasmus invites guests, in the first of four consecutive shows before the midterm US elections, to discuss the necessity of independent political action. Jack and guests today, and in subsequent weeks, will discuss the proposition: ‘What is the Way to Independent Politics in the USA’, where independence means from both the Republican and Democratic parties. Jack has asked guests to assume independent politics is a necessity today more than ever before, and to focus in their remarks on how should independent politics be built in the USA today given actual conditions at present? What are the appropriate strategies and tactics for establishing meaningful independent political action—at either national or local levels. Jack invites long time political and union activists, Jerry Gordon, of the Labor Fightback Network, and Jeff Mackler, of Socialist Action, to kick off the discussion. Both guests discuss recent efforts to launch independent politics in Lorrain, Ohio and in Chicago. (Next week’s guests in Part II of the series will include Jill Stein, presidential candidate of the Green Party, and a representative from the ‘Working Families Party’. In subsequent weeks, guests will include Mark Dudzic, the lead organizer of the effort to launch a ‘labor party’ in the USA in the 1990s; and in the show before the midterm elections, interviews of local independent candidates in cities in the USA who have run and won office in the recent past in local government).