Jill Stein in Seattle — No Votes for Genocide! RALLY on Tuesday, Oct. 15
Published 10/10/2024
by Workers Strike Back
The Democratic Party is in full-on attack mode over our movement’s unapologetic support for Jill Stein’s antiwar, pro-worker presidential campaign and our steadfast opposition to the genocide in Gaza.
The Democratic Party is especially nervous in swing states like Michigan, where Jill Stein leads Kamala Harris among Muslim voters. Workers Strike Back’s rally with Jill Stein and Abandon Harris on Sunday in Dearborn brought together thousands of working people, both in person in the critical swing state of Michigan and online across the country, to send a clear message to the Democratic Party: we won’t vote for genocide.
We made it clear at that rally: our goal is to build the largest possible antiwar vote for Jill Stein’s pro-worker, antiwar Presidential campaign, and to deny Kamala Harris a victory in Michigan, on the basis of clear opposition to her genocidal policies.
The Democrats’ support for the horrors in Gaza should cost them this election. As Kshama said in her speech, “If genocide is not a red line, then there is no red line. We need to end all support for the Democratic Party.”
Trump has vowed to double down on support for Netanyahu and the Israeli state. He and the Republicans are no less dangerous for working people, and no less an enemy of the antiwar movement. We cannot support EITHER of these two genocidal, anti-worker candidates or parties.
No matter who wins the White House, we will need a powerful movement to stop their reactionary agenda. Supporting Harris and the Democrats while they are funding the mass slaughter of 350,000 people and the now-escalating war against Lebanon would be a disastrous strategy for the antiwar movement. And there has to be a price paid for a sitting Vice President actively backing a genocide.
We stand with Muslim American antiwar organization Abandon Harris (formerly Abandon Biden), which is campaigning to defeat Harris in the swing states because of her unapologetic role in the wholesale destruction of Gaza, and in order to send a historic message to both parties. As Abandon Harris co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam has said, “Twenty-first century American history is being written, and it begins with November 5th.”
We need to fight for every vote against genocide and for Jill Stein, and then build for the mass organizing conference Workers Strike Back has called for in February 2025. Working people and the antiwar movement need our own, new independent party — a party that fights unapologetically for workers and the oppressed, and against the warmongering billionaire class.
Following Sunday’s powerful rally in Michigan, Democratic Party apologists came out of the woodwork to attack Jill Stein, Kshama Sawant, and regular people for daring to oppose Kamala Harris and her genocidal policies.
Democratic Party hack Lis Smith, who is best known for smearing more than a dozen women who accused New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment, attacked Kshama by claiming that she said the “quiet part out loud” in clarifying that Harris should be defeated in Michigan for backing this genocide.
Mehdi Hasan, a former MSNBC talking head and journalist who has consistently attacked Jill Stein and given unconditional support to Kamala Harris in the election, piled on, attacking Kshama and Jill Stein, saying: “They're not anti Harris *and* anti Trump. They're anti Harris.”
Workers Strike Back and Kshama have been very clear about opposing both Harris and Trump. As Kshama said in her speech in Dearborn on Sunday: “Our slogan must be: no votes for genocide. No votes for Harris, No votes for Trump… We need every possible vote for Jill Stein. Because every vote for Jill Stein is a vote AGAINST the genocide.”
The idea that “a vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Trump” is a recycled version of the same rotten argument that has long been used to justify the most brutal policies of the U.S. ruling class throughout the history of the two-party system.
In 1844, the antislavery movement refused to support the pro-slavery Whigs, despite being attacked as spoilers. Instead of supporting the “lesser evil”, abolitionist leaders campaigned for the Liberty Party. The Liberty Party didn’t win – it won about two percent of the vote – but the antislavery movement did succeed in denying the Whigs victory in the critical swing state of New York, which sent shockwaves through the country. Their bold campaign helped lay the foundation for the victorious antislavery movement of the 1850s and 1860s, and to the end of the Whig Party.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans will stop the escalation of war in the Middle East, and they won’t solve any of the crises facing working people. Just days ago, the Israeli military announced it has deployed thousands more troops into Lebanon, increasing the number of Israeli forces there to potentially more than 20,000. The Israeli state has now murdered 355,500 people in Gaza, 15 percent of the population. Working people in the United States are also suffering, including the millions who are caught in the destructive paths of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and who have been abandoned by both Democrats and Republicans.
Voting for the “lesser evil” is an utterly failed strategy that has led to further growth of the right wing and brought things to the disastrous point they’re at today. It was Clinton’s attacks on working people and the poor, from NAFTA to mass incarceration, that led to George W. Bush being elected. Obama’s betrayals, including bailing out the big banks instead of working people in 2008, gave rise to the Tea Party and later Trump.
Trump left office as the most unpopular president in modern U.S. history. The only reason there is any chance of his return is because the Biden/Harris administration attacked working people and abandoned their promises: on public healthcare, on the $15 minimum wage, on canceling student debt, ending the expanded Child Tax credit, and breaking the railroad workers strike. For the last year, the Biden/Harris administration has backed the genocide in Gaza to the hilt, leading to large sections of the Muslim American population abandoning the Democrats.
If Harris and the Democrats lose this election, the responsibility for that will lay entirely at their doorstep.
It will take an independent, fighting movement to stop the genocide–a movement that can break decisively with the two parties of the bosses and warmongers. This election is an opportunity that our movement cannot afford to miss to begin laying the foundation for a new, antiwar, working-class party independent of the Democrats and the Republicans.
We need to organize to end to the genocide, and to win what workers need: a $25/hour minimum wage, Medicare for All, affordable housing, an end to the deadly spiral of climate catastrophe, and a new party for working people.
To do that, we need to break the two-party system in the United States. If we don’t, we are facing a future of global war, genocide, and climate disaster. We cannot stand on the sidelines.
