Analysis of Showdown in Texas

AUSTIN
By Austin Correspondant to the Peoples' Weekly World
I was at the Texas Showdown yesterday but spent most of my time there talking to a top union officer and others about what to do about the terrible ass kicking we're getting at the Texas State Capitol. I wish I could be more upbeat about our prospects, but things don't look good.

On the whole, I would have to say that the showdown was quite disappointing. The message was unfocused and it attracted the fringe, rather than center people as the earlier anti-war demonstrations did.

On the plus side, there was more minority participation than I've seen at any anti-war rallies to date, and it looked like a good contingent of people from Dallas came.

Let me offer some more observations. My first point is that the thing was unfocused. People talked about everything from Palestinian liberation to fighting AIDS. This approach was effective at one time in bringing together left forces for united action. The whole fight back against globalization that coalesced in Seattle was very good at rejuvenating the left, but now we're in a different situation, and we need to think about expanding our base to the center.

The war has exacerbated some capitalist contradictions, but we don't seem to be exploiting them. For example, the war in Iraq will cost about $70 billion. This is $70 billion that won't be spent on health care, education, a job-creating public works program, or even homeland security. But this fact was barely mentioned in the speeches, it sure didn't come across in any of the media coverage, and it didn't seem to be a major concern of the leadership of the showdown or most of the people who attended.

Also there wasn't much of an attempt to link the problems that we're facing with the demands and priorities that late capitalism establishes for society. For example, the decline in the health care system can be directly linked to the financialization of the health care. More hospitals have been privatized and are owned by large corporations whose main goal is to increase stock value, not provide health care. The same can be said of insurance companies. Up until 15 years ago, most health insurance was provided by non profit companies, primarily the Blue Cross Blue Shield state insurance companies. These have all been turned into private, for-profit companies, whose goal is no longer providing affordable health insurance.

Finally, I think this demonstration was an example of how the left has failed to figure out how to work effectively in two areas--the streets and electoral politics. We either want to be militant and eschew elections or concentrate on elections. At the showdown, there was a lot of rhetoric about how bad the government is, but there wasn't much concrete discussion about what we could do about changing it. More street demonstrations like the showdown aren't going to bring about a change in who controls the house, senate, and executive offices. But the only solution that more mainstream leftists, like some unionists, offer is that we had to get more members to contribute to COPE so that we could give more political contributions to candidates, and we have to work harder to beat the Republicans.

I'd suggest that we have to be in the streets and that we have to have an election strategy; moreover, we need to figure out a way to make these two tactics complement each other. The message at our rallies and demonstrations should be simplified--U.S. imperialism costs workers our jobs, causes our health care to deteriorate, worsens our children's education, and makes us less safe. At our rallies and demonstrations, we need to talk about creating a left center coalition in elections to kick out the right wing extremists. We ought to register people to vote at these rallies and recruit people to get involved in activities that mobilze the grassroots to particpate in elections.

We had a good opportunity to mix street action and electoral politics Saturday, but didn't take advantage of it. The Republicans were holding US House redistricting hearings on Saturday. We should have marched to the hearing and shut it down, exposing it as a naked power grab to elect five more Tom Delay lackies who will vote to cut taxes for the rich, support trade treaties that will ship more jobs overseas, and cut services for the working class.