The Socialist Party is formally endorsing and our members will participate in the International Day to Shut Down Guantanamo on January 11th, 2008.

Check http://www.witnesstorture.org and here for updates as they become available.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey folks...

Hope you are well. So here we are again. We hope that the Socialist Party NY, SP NJ and the SP USA can sign on again this year, so that hopefully in '09 we can celebrate the one year anniversary of the closing of Guantanamo! Let me know as soon as you can so we can update our materials. You can also go to http://www.witnesstorture.org and click on endorse to fill out a form.read more »

SOCIALIST PARTY USA STATEMENT OF SUPPORT FOR THE SCREENWRITERS STRIKE

Labor Commission of the SP-USA

When the irreverent early 20th century comedian W.C. Fields was once caught reading the bible he explained that he was “looking for some loopholes.” On Monday November 5th, 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) took a bold strike action to sew up some of the loopholes which have allowed the entertainment industry to make exorbitant profits from their labor. The Socialist Party USA (SP-USA) stands with the WGA and calls upon the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to concede to the WGA’s demands for a just contract.

Unlike the often inebriated actor Fields, the AMPTP has found many profitable loopholes. While screenwriters are paid industry rates for work aired in traditional media venues such as television and movies, they receive only a small fraction of the profits generated in the “new” media outlets of DVD sales and internet based programming. Writers currently receive only 5 cents per unit for the sale of a DVD. For entertainment delivered via internet streaming video WGA members receive only 1.2% of gross revenue. There is also currently no language in the contract regarding the producer’s right to insert product placements into WGA member created scripts.read more »

The Socialist Party USA - NYC Local calls on the United States Department of Immigration to immediately terminate all deportation proceedings against Chilean exile Victor Toro. For the last 23 years, Victor Toro has lived in the United States and made a great contribution to the struggle of immigrant workers for human rights. Victor came to the U.S. after the criminal coup carried out against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende forced him into exile. He was seized in July of this year by officials of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while returning from a conference on immigrant rights and now faces deportation proceedings.

In the 1960s, Victor Toro helped to facilitate the revolutionary upsurge in Chile by organizing land seizures among indigenous groups in addition to spreading the ideas of militant action among the Chilean working class. This activity eventually lead to the formation of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario (MIR), a key revolutionary organization which pushed the Allende government from below towards more rapid nationalizations and the recognition of the claims of the homeless and landless. When the coup against the democratically elected Allende government occurred in 1973, the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet listed Victor Toro as one of the 13 most dangerous people in the country.read more »

The Gay Liberation Front, 1970.

by Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone
Convener, Queer Commission of the SPUSA

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, the New York City police raided a Greenwich Village bar: The Stonewall Inn. The Stonewall Inn, a gay and lesbian neighborhood bar with a large number of African American and Latino patrons, was also well-known as a safe space for those who did not conform to gendernorms: butch lesbians, effeminate gay men, and transsexual and transgendered persons before the terms were in popular use. All of these factors brought the police to Stonewall in 1969 for the purpose of illegally raiding the bar, and arresting its occupantsan action not unknown in New York in the 1960s. On that fateful day, however, the Stonewall's patrons had enough. Nobody knows who threw the first bottle that day. It may have been Sylvia Rivera, a transgendered activist and later a founding mother of political movements on behalf of transgendered and transsexual Americans. It may have been a still unidentified butch lesbian arrested in the bar. Over 2000 GLBTQ Americans clashed with 400 police officers on June 28. Arrests and beatings were concentrated among Stonewall's African American, Latino, butch and trans patrons. What ensued was known in the New York press and among the police as the Stonewall riots. For gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual and queer Americans, and later the world, that fateful day marked the beginning of the Stonewall Rebellion. With shouts of "Gay Power," the rebellion that lasted five days in New York began to spread across the country. Gay, lesbian, trans and other queer Americans took to the streets to protest their continued oppression, objectification, and criminalization. This singular event, the Stonewall Rebellion, marked the beginning of the modern GLBTQ liberation movement, and brought GLBTQ political and social struggles out of the closets on onto American streets. Using this date as the flashpoint, cities across America and around the world continue to celebrate the last week of June as Pride Weekend, a weekend where we remember the Rebellion, organize to continue the fight for queer liberation, and celebrate our culture, community, families and history.read more »

Sisters, Brothers, Comrades,
We send greetings to all who struggle against capitalism on this, your day.
Wherever those who suffer rebel, those who work tire, those who are alone organize: there is the revolution.

The future is in our hands. Let us join them across every barrier our rulers have created and build that future now.

Peace, Freedom, Socialism!

on behalf of the Socialist Party - USA, Greater NYC Local

Justin Denton
Ari Moore
Tommy Miles
David Mcreynolds

"Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying
We'll have freedom, love and health,
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers' Commonwealth."
-Joe Hill

The Socialist Party of New York City condemns unreservedly the shooting and murder by police in the early hours of Saturday, November 25th.

The specter of Amadou Diallo, Ousmane Zongo and Abner Louima hangs over this latest murder by those whom the government has given tremendous power over our lives. Police with no uniform or identification fired fifty bullets at three unarmed men in a van, leaving a nightclub. Already, the police have tried to leak a criminal history of these victims, to paint them as the police involved undoubtedly saw them, as members of a 'criminal class': guilty before any crime is committed, a threat to society for being young African-American men.

A witness said that the victims were in a car that struck an unmarked police car. Then "the [unmarked police] minivan came around the corner and smashed into their car. And they [the police] jumped out shooting, No 'stop.' No 'freeze.' No nothing." One man is dead, two are fighting for their lives. The police were not in uniform, apparently part of a 'vice squad' investigation of the club. Police spokespeople could not say if police involved had been drinking. They did confirm that one officer emptied two full clips of ammunition into the victim's car, meaning he had to stop, reload, and continue shooting.

Make no mistake, this is not an isolated incident. Police violence in this society is treated with impunity, even when armed with all the firepower of a small army. The day-to-day behavior of police shows little of the courtesy and respect that their slogans trumpet. Police behave as if they are above the law, because those in power allow them to. Police (even police from ethnic minorities) treat every young black male as a threat because we live in a racist society. And we live with these racist presumptions not because we're idiots, but because the system in which we live profits when we fear one another, and profits more when one group of people can be marked out as an underclass. Capitalism drives this. Capitalism gives us all an incentive to divide ourselves into warring parties. Capitalism pushes us to pocket the exploitation of others; and it's easier to sleep at night when those you exploit don't look like your own family. Capitalism pushes working class white people to say 'I may be doing bad, but at least I'll always do better than THEM.' And when whites get poorer like everyone else, the only thing they can see that keeps them off the bottom is pushing someone else back down. Why do the powers that be back up every cop in every shooting, let them behave with impunity to the rest of us, but still won't give the police a decent union contract? The last one costs money.

In the short term, police and politicians need to be held to account. Murder must be called murder, and those invested with such public trust must be held to a higher standard. The police demand that the murder of a police officer be a great crime. So too must be murder BY a police officer.

Police must be drawn from the communities they serve and must be directly accountable to them. They must be well trained, as much in mediation as force if they are to serve, not rule, us. There must be no tolerance for the taking of petty advantage. If Kelly and his like trumpet the 'broken windows' theory of comming down hard on minor breaches of law, then the use of a badge to get out of speeding tickets or get special favors should be punished as severely. In return, police have the right to a strong union, good pay, and decent benefits.

But until we remove the system that sets us against one another, Sean Bell, Trent Benefeld, and Joseph Guzman will be just the latest victims, not the last.

The Socialist Party - USA, Greater New York City Local
November 28th, 2006

---ends---