Racism is a product of class oppression; the two are fundamentally connected. The Workers Party acknowledges the history of African American struggle which has resulted in the election of Barack Obama.
The vast majority of African Americans remain wage earners. Obama is considering Lawrence Summers as head of Treasury. Former head of the World Bank, Summers supported dumping toxic waste on Africa.
Thanks for the “long history of partnership”. Thanks for New Zealand’s military participation in wars in Korea, the Pacific and more recently in Afghanistan.
Hang on a minute, isn’t Helen Clark supposed to be a peacenik camouflaged in a power suit?
Much has been made about Barack Obama’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the last remaining Democratic primaries of the United States election year. Numerous capitalist media outlets hailed the outcome as a “tremendous step” for civil rights, while right-wing smear attacks centred on his supposed links with communism or radical Islam (due to his Arabic middle name). Many newspapers have said how Obama’s candidacy has given hope not only to Americans, but to many people all over the world, since Obama is “for the people”.
However, if you go scrape away his populist rhetoric, you will find a very different image of the man.
“The presidential nomination of the Republican Party is up for grabs among a motley collection of mean-spirited law-and-order fanatics, anti-immigrant bigots and warmongers,” commented the US Socialist Worker of January 11. “This is the consequence of the crisis of the Bush administration - mired in Iraq, distrusted for its shredding of the Constitution and responsible for the steadily worsening mess of an economy.”
Socialist Worker argued that ” voters’ desire to see political change has become the undisputed theme of the 2008 US presidential elections”.
As this article is being written, the frontrunner for the Democratic Party nomination and possibly the US presidency is black Illinois senator Barack Obama.
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