Socialist Action is running an independent socialist candidate for the senate races in CT this year. Fred Mitch Linck, an Iraq Veteran and Communist, has succeeded in collecting nearly 11,000 signatures to secure a spot on the ballot, with the state requiring at least 7,5000 to be on the ballot. This is the first organizationally independent socialist campaign for senate in quite a long time.
The Platform is such: 1. Defend unions and workers’ rights to organize! For an independent labor party based on a democratic, fighting labor movement. 2. Stop all deportations now! Amnesty now! Equal rights for immigrants! No wall! No Muslim ban! No refugee ban! 3. Black Lives Matter! Jail killer cops. Dismantle the racist police and the criminal justice system! 4. Reparations for Puerto Rico, for African-American, indigenous and all colonized communities. 5. Reproductive Justice: Free, accessible contraception and abortion on demand. The right to raise healthy children. 6. Quality Free Public Childcare/Eldercare for all, 24-7. Free education for life. 7. Full civil and human rights for the LGBTQI community. 8. Free quality universal public health care now! 9. Emergency conversion to 100% renewable energy. 10. Dismantle the U.S. war machine. End U.S. aid to Israel! For a democratic secular Palestine!
first salt, now SA why are you so bad at picking names?
Julian Hill
He protests against capitalism now but the bourgeois state machine will eat him alive and convert him into just another bootlicker reformist in a suit. Socdems were a mistake
Christopher Perry
What’s wrong with SA? Believe me when I say the letters “SA” have no association with them to 99% of Americans
Tyler Stewart
...
Brayden Murphy
Why is this ALWAYS an immediate reaction from some idiots on this board?
Pic related, it's from his website. Time to admit this is one of you retards.
That will never happen in America under our current form of government, period.
Aaron Hill
It should be noted our strategy is not one which things there is a legislative path to socialist power through the bourgeois state. Rather we acknowledge that elections are an excellent time and place of heightened political consciousness (and understandable apathy) and thus make a great time to call out and confront bourgeois politicians on their countless lies, and bluntly expose and debate the nature of capitalism in public. If by some miracle we did win the senate seat (extremely unlikely given we are a tiny, barely known third party) there are ways to use it - such as abstaining from the vast majority if not all votes, using the position to discuss things and mobilize, fiercly refusing bourgeois organization's influence. More than likely even if we did "win," the state wouldn't allow us to take office - Allende is a good example of what often happens to serious "socialist" politicians elected under bourgeois states. A revolution is needed.
However, class conscious is something that needs to be built, and elections are good times to discuss these things openly. Going out and discussing with people an openly revolutionary platform is very important and exciting. Our platform is not one we think could be legislated in by the US government or ever would be - but we do think they are realistic goals and demands of a workers' revolutionary movement, and in fact must be.
Nathaniel Ross
I mean I’d rather have him win any day over the usual two-party shit, so good luck comrade.
Landon Ramirez
Again, we have utterly no chance to win this election race. Even if we could, the path to communism is not through winning seats in a massive bourgeois power apparatus - the workers state won't be born by co-opting the new but by smashing the old. The point is to bring awareness and consciousness of these real issues, and while it is certainly a small step, it would be the first organizationally independent (from bourgeois parties, a strictly proletarian party) revolutionary socialist to be on the ballot for a senate race in decades - in the process of collecting these signatures we've had conversations with thousands across the state, from all places in terms of consciousness and politics. No matter how reactionary, the majority understand there is something wrong even if they can't articulate it. You'd be surprised how many "trump supporters" and "republicans" signed and were interested in what we had to say - many people were excited by our platform or at least interested. We are just a small group, but we are doing what we can to push the workers movement forward.
Cooper Sanchez
Btw suddenly I don't want to kill all Americans anymore. Wtf is wrong with me
Thank you comrade! It's been a lot of work for something that likely won't have an immediate obvious or enormous return, (such as winning the race - how can we compete with bourgeois parties that have the full power of the state and corporate ad funding? Though getting enough of the vote to stay on the ballot would be a possibly more feasible goal, with 1-2% of the vote needed) but I think what we're doing is needed work. In the next few months we're going to keep campaigning across the state at major events, talking to unions, towns, climate justice and immigrants rights groups, etc.
Fred actually won the endorsement of the local "Quiet Corner CT" Democrat Cops of America chapter (who are made of significantly more radical individuals than the Central State Democrat Cops of America, who have been backing dems consistently for a while) - and some of our friends in that group have submitted to national Democrat Cops of America to endorse him. That'd definitely give us more publicity, but I'm skeptical of whether the Democrat Cops of America will go to the trouble of nationally endorsing a real commie, as opposed to our millionaire dem pals like Nixon and Cortez.
William Cox
Of course along the way I've encountered tons of "communism never worked" people. In fact, the very first time I went out petitioning, the first person I met wanted to let me know "communism has killed 100 billion people." When I told him "eh that's not true" he barked "do more research kid," "I have" "well…do some more research."
Besides some notably reactionary triggered fucks though, I've encountered a whole lot of positivity, of course much from immigrants, people of color, etc more so than your average old white person, but there's still quite a lot of good reception for some of the points at least.
And it was definitely amusing to see some people conflicted over how he's a socialist who they should hate, but also a veteran who deserves respect. The "anti-war veteran" angle was pretty good, and you better believe I pulled the "he fought for your freedom to disagree with communism" line on some particularly dumb folk. But it's been a good campaign.
Jack Thomas
This is a pointless statement to make.
Victory for a campaign like this means establishing blocs and getting the message around. We need more like it.
Carter Young
REEEEEEEEE IMPERIALIST
Zig Forums just came to the agreement that military vets shouldn't be allowed in another past thread and here's a vet doing what all you armchair faggots wish you could do.
Jeremiah Howard
I don't care about vets but don't get mad at me when I accurately describe you and your kind as "baby killers" and/or "murderers." Also if you get mad about "stolen valor" I unironically hope you and/or your friends get a bullet next time they stick their face out of whatever bunker they live while slaughtering people in the third world.
Lucas James
Good luck comrade. Parliamentary forms of struggle are important to achieve the conditions for workers' revolution
are you a friend of his, campaign manager, volunteer? Did you spend your summer knocking on doors for those 10,000 signatures?
Jack Flores
No he's a LARPer like all of you
Ian Roberts
You know I'm right.
Christian Kelly
Nah we weren’t knocking on doors, we were going around the state every weekend, and then especially in the past month almost every day, to big public events and gatherings. We’ve been to festivals, concerts, carnivals, shopping districts, transit stations, neighborhoods and street corners, grocery stores and parks, jazz festivals and parties by the water, parades and fireworks, etc etc. Any major events held across the state we tried to go out for, and filled in spots we could in plenty of smaller ways.
We were aiming to get more signatures than we did just because from people we’ve talked to, we know the state department has tended to throw out as many signatures as possible - if any info is wrong, or signed in the wrong place they’ll not count it. Hence why we got up to almost 11,000 instead of settling at 7,500. We hoped for more but we did what we could. The process is full of bureaucratic horeshit when you’re being a principled independent third party - there was a separate sheet for every single town, we had hundreds of these sheets, every single one had to be signed by the person who collected them. Before we could have access to the petitions, we had to turn in a 30 signature petition. It’s been a ton of work for a small step but I think it’s worth it - however meaningfully we’ve talked to thousands in the process, attracted some interested new contacts and friends, made some connections to other orgs. Good stuff.
Benjamin Hughes
Be sure to stock up on guns and ammo, if you lose go out with a bang and try to start the Worker's Revolution!
Asher Smith
What's next for the campaign now that you are on the ballot.
Russia wasn't the sole capitalist super power. Russians didn't subsist on super profits extracted from brutally oppressed peoples across the globe. It's a totally different situation.
Jayden Jones
How does that make someone who rejects that systems me is now a socialist bad? Like obviously US imperialism is bad but barring all people who got duped into Iraq and Afghan by W is dumb
Good. all deportation seems a little drastic, but ok, I guess weirdly worded, but good wtf? Give them houses and jobs instead. hmm… ok? Good. wtf? What rights does lgbbq people do not have? Even more healthcare than in 6.? This is even better! wtf? Ok, good luck, I guess Great!
Nathan Miller
mate tsarist russia had literal serfs and slave trade. Just because they worked people to death in the caucasus and siberia, not Tunesia or Guharat they weren't any less imperialist.
Nicholas Gonzalez
By the M-L standards of imperialism yes, Tsarist Russia was less imperialist than Britain-Germany-France because it was a debtor, not a creditor state. Its imperialism was the archaic and crude "whip and hang all the godless gooks and blackies" type, not modern financial imperialism.
Also the guy seems based. Couldn't care less that he's an imperialist vet if he is calling for the dismantlement of the US war machine and dropping such dank redpills. Hope he manages to make the cut. Also I think he got more votes already than that one neonazi who tried to get into the Senate?
Nathaniel Carter
my comrade
the whole "reperations" thing is likely him trying to win over the other ethnicities, then again, can we be sure of his power level
Nicholas Walker
That website design is horrific.
Sebastian Hall
it's just there to pander to normies. Like it or not, if you wanna get elected yu need to appeal to the mainstream voter. I don't think this one thing ruins the list though, since it's rather minor.
Parker Evans
fucking this
Sebastian Lewis
Reperations generally doesn't mean gibs tbh, Housing, Jobs & Universal Public Services are more or less reperations tbh, but yeah I agree there needs to be a distinction made there, if you're actually a Communist reperations in it's colloquially understood definition doesn't really make sense.
Tyler Sanchez
Also, Reproductive rights are a serious issue in the US, there is currently a wave of attempts to more or less ban abortion as I understand it, and there are also a fair amount of issues with LGBTQ+ rights in the country, so it's not really uncalled for even if it does seem pandery and the language used isn't the greatest
Do you have any experience with Web Design or know anyone that does? Perhaps you could talk to the Trot in this thread about improvements? The website is pretty shitty, could use some work
Evan Jenkins
It's fucking nothing.
If you're going the electoral route, don't half ass it with literal who parties. It's purely performative.
btw mate this is fucking connecticut, 100% renewable energy is a completely realistic goal, 3 million people don'g need a nuclear power plant
Justin Fisher
have fun when another chernobyl turns your home town into a toxic mutant filled wasteland …wait thats awesoe
Michael Parker
Linck is running for US senate, not the Connecticut state senate. Federal senators aren't involved in the administration of their respective states, except tangentially by competing for pork barrel spending (gibs).
Mason Phillips
oh, excuse me then.
Blake Jenkins
no problem. I'm here to learn about gommunism. If I can occasionally teach someone something about US electoral politics, then that's a fair transaction.
