Monday, October 22, 2012

Vote with your Heart: Cast a Ballot for Socialism

 22 October 2012

By Burkely Hermann
Global Research

"I have debated again and again in my mind who I should vote for. Obama and Romney, the corporate choices handed to me are not of my favor due to the fact that pleasing their overlords is not something I want to do. Instead, I listened to Democracy Now’s wonderful "Expand the Debate" where they asked Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson the same general ideas described in the debate (Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate was invited but declined). Still, listening to Stein and Anderson, I found something troubling: there was much in their ideas.

While the ideas were valid, and they were fierce in their criticism, it didn’t seem like enough. Just like when I watched the first Presidential debate and saw similarities between Romney and Obama (even though they were false in a sense as Romney was being a con man that night), I worried that I wouldn’t be voting for that much of a difference. I know that the Green Party is more environmentally-focused and the Justice Party is more justice-focused, but to me, both of them seemed like social democrats. After reading my favorite book, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, I knew something more was possible than just a new form of capitalism since Zinn had written a whole chapter about the socialist movement in the early 20th century, including numerous men and women who were socialists including Hellen Keller, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Big Bill Haywood of the IWW, Mother Jones and Eugene Debs. With this rich history, I thought it would be wrong to not vote for what was right, what I felt inside of me.

I was intrigued by the campaign of Stewart Alexander and Alex Mendoza of the Socialist Party USA, who hadn’t been covered on the Real News Network or even Democracy Now!, two alternative media outlets I respect and love deeply for their dedication to objective journalism. The man was a middle-aged African American who was a bit a mix between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Eugene Debs in my mind.  The campaign video they put out was what really turned me...."

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