New Directions promised that they would bring a new, winning approach to leading the Local. If the Local’s assembly for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is any indication, however, ND is continuing the old guard’s suicidal entanglement with the two capitalist political parties.
This event in the union hall was a parade of Democratic Party politicians, from ex-Mayor Dinkins to Bronx Borough President Ferrer to Senator Schumer, to several other Democratic hopefuls and has-beens. The new Local 100 leadership, from President Toussaint on down invited these bosses’ agents to the workers’ hall and acted like friends with them – when not one of these scumbags supported us against the MTA, Giuliani and Wall Street in our Fall ‘99 strike movement!
To defend what we’ve got, let alone improve our lot, transit workers, like all workers, are going to have to fight the bosses and their two parties, the Republicans and Democrats. Too often workers are told that lobbying “friends of labor” in the Democratic Party is an alternative to strikes and protests, only to see the Democrats stab labor in the back time and again. It is shameful that the new leadership of our Local is contributing to such illusions in the Democratic Party.
Workers must understand that in our struggle against the capitalists we can only trust our class’s organization and our class’s power to struggle. And we must oppose any attempt to encourage trust in our class enemies and their politicians. The working class needs its own political party that represents its independent interests against the capitalists. Because capitalism is based on the exploitation and oppression of the working class, and because its economic decline promises only worse, revolutionaries say that party must be dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism and the building of socialism. The experience of future mass struggles will help teach more and more workers this lesson.