There's A War at Home Too:
Where Are the Candidates' Voices?

Statement of the National Executive Committee, CCDS - August 5, 2003

The Iraq quagmire deepens.
The Iraqi people continue to suffer from collapse of their country's infrastructure. The lies and deception used by the Bush administration to start a war come to light every day. The administration refuses to turn to the United Nations to rebuild and lay the groundwork for an independent, democratic post-Saddam country. And the killing goes on.
To varying degrees, Democratic presidential candidates have begun to speak out against the unilateralism, bungling, and falsehoods of the Bush administration's Iraq war. Those statements must continue and become more forceful.
But there is another war right here at home. It is an increasingly destructive assault on the poor, on all working people, and particularly on African Americans, Latinos, and other oppressed nationalities. It is driven by growing the cost of the administration's occupation of Iraq balloons to four billion dollars a month – with no end in sight.
This war is underscored by a shocking increase in joblessness – especially among African American and Latino youth. While unemployment among whites reached 5.5 percent in June (2003), the jobless rate among blacks was 11.8 percent and among Latinos, 8.4 percent. While unemployment among all sections of the population grew sharply in the last year, joblessness in communities of color grew in a short time at an alarming rate. Unemployment among African American teenagers is an astounding 39.3 percent – a ten point jump in a single year.
It is no wonder that such crushing joblessness generates frustration and rage which recently exploded in Benton Harbor, Michigan and will likely occur elsewhere, especially when combined with oppressive social conditions.
Yet, the public has not heard those seeking office express alarm and offer proposals to confront this accelerating crisis. Three Democratic candidates were justly chastised for initially absenting themselves from the electoral forum of the NAACP, the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. That absence perhaps reflects a deeper insensitivity within the entire electoral campaign to institutional racism – a fundamental, pervasive and powerful factor in the economic and social crisis which is not being addressed.
The crisis extends to public education. With disastrous cuts in federal funding, universities and colleges, especially community colleges, are being forced upon working families and communities of color. Tens of thousands are giving up hope for a college education. Many more are being forced to seek additional hard-to-find part-time employment, thus sacrificing precious time for study. The Bush administration's cuts in federal aid to schools has meant that virtually no child is being left behind collapsing elementary education, especially in the cities where cutbacks in federal funding are forcing sharp reductions in curriculum and in after-school programs. Head Start programs are being fobbed off on the nearly bankrupt states, assuring the squeezing or elimination of services like school lunches to the children of the poor.
The Bush war on seniors is entering its most crucial and painful stage. Millions of seniors every day face agonizing choices between spending for food and rent or for exorbitantly priced drugs.
Forty-eight million people are being threatened with deep cuts in Medicaid programs for prescription drugs, home healthcare, nursing home care, vision and dental care -- while the administration seeks to substitute meager fixed and capped block grants to the states for Medicare entitlements.
Federal aid to public housing is under attack as several million tenants dependent upon rent vouchers are threatened with elimination of that program and with consequent homelessness.
Workfare, the centerpiece of "welfare reform" is being stripped of resources for urgently needed education and training -- while workfare jobs disappear by the thousands.
The old segregation saw of "states' rights" is being rekindled to dump more and more federal social programs on states while they are being starved of federal funding. Nearly every state is on the verge of bankruptcy; cuts are being made in programs ranging from daycare to rape crisis centers, to legal assistance to the poor. An ideological assault on what remains of social welfare is creating a crisis of monumental proportions.
Where are the candidates' voices? Where is their protest? Where is the effort to use their electoral pulpit to spotlight these urgent issues? Where is the outcry against institutional racism? Where is the demand for alternatives on the scale of past proposals such as "A Marshall Plan for the Cities"?
CCDS urges progressive activists to demand of the candidates that the issues of joblessness and unprecedented assault on education and social programs be addressed with urgency, clarity, and constructiveness.
That is especially vital in this electoral season.
That is vital for forging an inseparable link between the war on working people and the poor at home and the need to end the costly and oppressive occupation of Iraq -- and bring the troops home!
That is vital for registering and mobilizing millions of working class, nationally oppressed, and poor voters. And that is vital for defeating Bush in 2004