The Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings do not support the so-called “Lesser Evil” argument. In fact the sham of a SCOTUS confirmation absolutely underscores the necessity for us to build a mass party independent of Wall Street power which can actually organize and lead millions to fight back. The party of labor and ecology that we need would be calling upon and organizing workers and unions to strike, protest and truly resist the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett. This is the kind of mass party that we desperately need today. Instead, we have two ruling parties that do the opposite – they both organize in meeting rooms to put down labor resistance and militant protests. 

The Democrats are failing to offer ANY serious resistance to Barrett’s confirmation; this is a case of deja vu that should not come as a surprise to any of us by now. The same script is being played out again and the people who are telling us that they are the “Lesser Evil” are capitulating to her confirmation and hugging their so called “greater evil” cronies. The consistent deadly betrayals by the political elite of the interests and lives of everyday people are once again masked by fake respectability politics during the pomp and circumstance of these hearings.

Our upcoming popular resistance to the confirmation of Barrett will once again be blunted by a well-financed liberal wall of calls for “civility” by the Democrats. We will hear desperate pleas for more donations to the big nonprofits that function no differently than corporations. They will come to our demonstrations and implore us to “resist” by electing them to capitulate. Again. They will even host well-funded tightly-controlled “protests”, in order to funnel the righteous anger of the people back into the clutches of the Democratic Party. Again. These non-profits will ask us to pour our dwindling funds into their lobbyist organizations which pale in comparison to the rich corporate lobbyists. This is all ultimately a twisted political game to the political class and the non-profit leadership because they are primarily concerned with perpetuating their careers and their power. Why? Because they see no future beyond our decaying system. None of them will be calling for us to strike or pour into the streets or to do anything significant to hurt the bottom dollar of their corporate bosses. This will continue to happen time and time again as the contradictions and decline of our system deepen - until we break with the Two Party trap and build our own independent power.

We, the working class majority, desperately need to build our own parties which represent the interests of the people and the planet; not the Wall Street elite who are the proven enemies of labor, ecology and peace. Such a party may begin with humble and difficult beginnings, but the hunger for such an organization is real. Two-thirds of Americans today want more parties. To move towards a party that represents the interests of every day working class people, we need to ditch once-and-for-all the divisive language defining SOME of us are the "middle class" and some are less deserving, which politicians from BOTH ruling parties have consistently used to divide and conquer working people. They have wielded this rhetoric to deceive us into believing that "some" of us would be protected by them against the rest of us. That we are better off divided. This kind of divisive politics has paved the way for Trumpism and far worse. This class-divisive rhetoric, underscored by the lack of an independent party of labor, has set back the ability of the majority to build true power.

Now is not the time to play it safe. We have seen with this systemic response to the ongoing pandemic and economic crisis that none of us are safe. As the profit system continues its death spiral towards mass evictions, war, potential nuclear annihilation, environmental collapse and rising fascism, we are ALL at risk of perishing if we do not forge a new Ecosocialist system. To do this, we need to fundamentally redefine what a real party for the us should be - a vehicle for people with similar interests, that organizes to fight for those interests. A new mass party must have a fundamentally different structure than the corporate structure of the DemoPublican system. It must be built on organizing, not high-dollar advertising. We cannot beat them in a party they control with tactics they have billions to spend on. We must have a party that is involved in movements and which can make headways in labor. All of these things require the commitment of everyday people like us - a stark contrast with the “Coke or Pepsi” politics of our present electoral system.

The impending confirmation of Barrett to the Supreme Court and the complete capitulation of even the left-most congressional Democrats underscores the backwardness of our entire 233 year old system of the electoral college, of state-controlled gerrymandered districts and an anti-democratic Senate body. This system includes the archaic structure of the Supreme Court - a small handful of judges appointed by the servants of the elite that is incapable of being recalled by the direct will of the people. Despite several historic hard fought progressive victories embodied in the Bill of Rights, all of the sitting Supreme Court Justices have at one time or another, played a role in eroding many of those protections - the First and Fourth Amendments in particular. The last progressive Amendment to this country’s Constitution, lowering the voting age to 18, was passed almost 50 years ago in response to our powerful Vietnam Anti-War movement during which millions of youth stood up to the draft and the injustices of being forced to kill and be killed but not even able to vote. The gradual decline to a complete halt of progressive amendments over the last century, underscores the calcification of our political system ruled by corporate power, and its total resistance to bending or responding to the will of the masses. New generations have called this systemic dead end “late stage capitalism” and that is a wholly appropriate description.

This is why a party capable of steering future mass movements forward to lasting organizational power (instead of into the two party trap) is necessary. The Democrats have proven time and time again that they will not protect us or even respect the majority will of its voters. Their purpose as a party ruled by the rich and their own interests is to protect the status quo of the wealthy elite above all else - including their own party's success at representing or even inspiring its voters. More than half of Congress are millionaires themselves. The Democrats will never fight for us - they serve Wall Street, the war industry, and the corporate developers. They will only occasionally concede to our demands and then spend the rest of the time eroding those concessions in lock step with Republicans. As the late great comedian and social critic George Carlin observed, it's all one big Wall Street club, including most of the politicians who are wealthy themselves- and we're not in it.

The North Carolina Green Party calls upon the people of North Carolina to support us and join us in our goal of fighting for a new and better system. We cannot accomplish this by simply voting for the “lesser” evil and putting far less resources in building something new. Now is not the time of pragmatism and fear-based retreat - now is the time to stand up and fight for our collective survival.

The North Carolina Green Party
https://www.ncgreenparty.org