First Published: Revolution, Vol. 2, No. 1, October 15, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The Revolutionary Communist Party is holding meetings in many areas ground the country in October and early November, to bring out its view on the meaning of the 76 elections to the working class in its struggle with the capitalist rulers. Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Central Committee of the RCP, is speaking on this important question in a number of cities. So far, he spoke in New York City to an audience of about 275 people on October 1 and in Milwaukee on October 17.
In Milwaukee, the speech was preceded by a dinner. Over 175 people of all nationalities, mostly workers and working class youth, responded to the speech with loud applause and a lively question and answer session.
Before election day comrade Avakian will speak in the following cities:
Chicago, Saturday, October 23
Detroit, Sunday, October 24
Cincinnati, Thursday, October 28
Cleveland, Saturday, October 30
Los Angeles, Monday, November 1
The times of the programs will generally be in the evenings. More specific information will be released in the local areas. The meetings held by the Party and these speeches are an important part of the battle around this year’s elections. Below are a few excerpts from the speech in Milwaukee which highlight some of the points that will be made in all the upcoming programs.
There are some differences between them. Let’s look at how they argue it out. Carter gets up and says, ’Ford is corrupt. He’s tainted with Watergate, he doesn’t care about the people who are unemployed, he doesn’t care if inflation is as high as it is. He’s just going to let things go that way if it’s needed to help big business.’ And Carter’s right.
And Ford gets up and says, ’Jimmy Carter is a liar. He’s not going to create more jobs. All of his programs can’t even be paid for, they’re going to create more inflation even if he tries to implement them. And he’s a shuck and a fraud.’ And Ford’s right.
Because either way you turn either one of their programs is only going to continue this system and continue to try to soften us up for more attacks. That’s the nature of the whole setup.
How can you represent capital and labor at the same time? How can you speak for the slavemaster and the slaves at the same time? Right there you know that they’re liars. Anybody that gets up and says that they represent the slavemaster and the slave at the same time is a liar from the get go. And that’s the first thing we’ve got to understand. We don’t talk about representing the slaveowner and the slave. We represent the slaves and that’s all there is to it. And we’re determined that we ain’t going to be slaves no more. That’s all there is to it! [Applause]
Once we begin to understand what they’re doing to us, we can see that this election is not just a shuck, not just ’no solution.’ It’s an attack on us. It’s an attempt to get us out acting for our slavemasters to give them a stamp of approval to keep us enslaved. They come along and say, ’You’re going to have one of them anyway. You might as well vote because, even though neither one of them is any good, you’re going to have one of them anyway.’
They’re telling us something and we should learn from it. What they’re saying is, ’You’re going to have exploitation anyway, have oppression anyway, you’re going to be robbed and attacked and cheated and see your kids go without shoes, see health care cut back, we’re going to have all that anyway no matter which man is elected.’ And they’re telling the truth even though they’re trying to tell a lie. We should learn from that truth. All they’re saying is that as long as we have capitalism we will have exploitation and oppression anyway so you might as well vote for it because the real candidate is not Ford or Carter, the real candidate is their so-called free enterprise system, their actual system of wage slavery that we’re being asked to vote for.