-Caveat Lector-
In a message dated 99-12-03 02:51:06 EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, nessie wrote:
>>>The task is not to join them at the table but to overturn the table.
>>
>>If violence is not a wholly appropriate method for dealing with people who
>>exploit slave labor, then the American Civil War was a mistake.
>
>This country was FOUNDED via violence, and emerged as a world power via
>violence...
>
>Every major political and social change in this country only came about
>as a result of violence...
Electoral politics is a shell game: Don't vote
KEVIN KEATING
San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 3, 1999
In my neighborhood, the Mission, many tenants, working
people, desperate housing activists and even a few self-styled
anarchists are elated by Tom Ammiano's surprisingly strong
showing in the Nov. 2 election.
Ammiano's popularity is clearly a function of The City's
catastrophic housing crisis. When compared to Downtown Willie
Brown, Ammiano appears to be a pro-tenant candidate and a friend
of working people. Ammiano has even pledged that as mayor he'll
declare an all-out war against gentrification, which is
destroying the unique character of this city.
By all accounts Ammiano is a decent human being,
especially when compared to the other mayoral candidates in the
November election. He is also an excellent stand-up comedian.
But working and poor people who trust Ammiano in particular
and electoral politics in general operate under a staggering
number of illusions. As a Democratic Party politician, Ammiano is
not an ally of working and poor people.
In a recent debate with Mayor Brown, Ammiano said he
supports the San Francisco Police Department ticketing homeless
people for possession of shopping carts. Ammiano supported
Proposition E, the "Rescue Muni" [Municipal Railway = public
transportation] initiative that won passage on Nov. 2. It
scapegoats Muni employees for the systematic mismanagement by
Muni bureaucrats and City Hall. Prop. E will increase workplace
surveillance and harassment of Muni workers. It will result in
fare hikes, massive wage and benefit concessions from Muni
employees and Muni's eventual privatization.
Prop. E was also supported by the Committee on Jobs, a
downtown lobby of bankers, stockbrokers and real estate
speculators, including billionaire GAP CEO Donald Fisher. This is
strange company for a supposed "radical."
Regardless of who wins the mayor's race, all of San
Francisco's elected officials will ensure that a profitable and
well-policed corporate order thrives at the expense of wage
workers, tenants and poor people. The right to vote is not a
significant mechanism of political power in this society.
Billionaires, millionaires and their servants in the media,
legal and academic professions decide what the issues are and
frame the terms of discussion. The rich determine the policies of
the state.
As mayor, Ammiano would be at the mercy of big-money special
interests, like the suits behind the Committee on Jobs, people
who were never voted into power and cannot be voted out of power.
No "good intentions" on the part of the most idealistic elected
official can change this. You cannot vote your way around it.
No real improvement in the lives of working class and poor
people was ever brought about by voting. In the labor movement of
the 1930s and the more militant wing of the civil rights movement
of the 1960s, large numbers of people shut down whole industries
and made major cities ungovernable until the ruling class and
their goons backed off.
In France, bosses and corporations haven't been able to
reduce the living conditions of working people to an American
level of exploitation and impoverishment because wage workers
there have staged massive strikes that forced bosses to back
down. They play to win when they refuse to play the system's
game.
The appalling, market-driven housing crisis in this town
won't be affected by a mayoral election - but if San Francisco
tenants organize an unlimited citywide rent strike, with a modest
goal of reducing all rents to 25 percent of their current rate,
we could destroy the gentrification craze.
Only large-scale, collective direct action can keep San
Francisco from becoming a sterile, culturally vacuous Disneyland
for the rich.
Instead of voting, talk to your fellow tenants and
co-workers. Fight for your interests against the interests of
landlords, bosses, corporations and the rich.
Liberals and conservatives alike are out to make this city
uninhabitable for the wage-earning class. Don't be a chump. Make
an intelligent choice; join the two-thirds of eligible voters
nationwide who refuse to play the shell game of voting.
Examiner contributor Kevin Keating, an audio technician, is
alleged by San Francisco police to be "Nestor Makhno" of the
Mission Yuppie Eradication Project.
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