Dear Dr. Cornel West,
I am a 26 year old Special Education Teacher in Brooklyn, New York. I live paycheck to paycheck, live in a small room, and have amassed over six figures of student loan debt with no prospect of ever paying it back. I have no ambition for economic advancement and extravagance. For several years, I made the decision to dedicate my life for the cause of liberation for the oppressed of the Earth, struggling in various socialist groups; I’m now involved in building Brooklyn Eviction Defense, my labor union in the UFT and the MORE caucus, and in my spare time calling out the pro-Democratic Party and pro-labor bureaucracy elements in the Democratic Socialists of America. For me, the meaning of life in our historical period is to crush and liquidate the capitalist class, put all power at the hands of the oppressed of the world, and reorganize all of world society so that humanity can have a harmonious relationship with Mother Earth and all her offspring. So that all of us can live in peace, and pursue a life of love, joy, and freedom! I begin this letter with this introduction, because since the global crisis of Capitalism in 2008, the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, the Sanders campaign in 2016, and the George Floyd Rebellion in 2020, there are thousands of people like myself, forged through class struggle, living in the United States of America, who believe in the necessity for Socialism and are ready to fight for it. We recognize that there is little option. It is either to accept the conditions of Capitalism and fall into a lifestyle of apathy and hedonism, or to pursue a life of struggle against the Capitalist machine till the very end.
We are fighting in our workplaces for better conditions, fighting in our labor unions for more militancy and democracy, fighting to build and grow tenant unions as a means to combat landlordism, fighting to build our political groups in order to spread the ideology of liberation to the masses, and simply fighting to retain our optimism and hopes for the future in the face of a Capitalism that has led us to an ever worsening climate catastrophe and the creeping prospect of nuclear World War III, ie, a capitalism that is leading all of humanity to extinction. However, it is clear that these economistic and local struggles are not even close to enough to truly challenge the rule of Capital. We will never defeat the might of the Capitalist class, a class which has organized all of society on the basis of personal profit, thus creating a culture of greed, selfishness, and addiction to short-term pleasure, by simply demanding better working or living conditions while leaving the levers of power safely at the hands of the Capitalists. As a teacher on the front lines of the social crisis created by Capitalism, serving many students who are homeless and live in abject poverty, it is clear to me that the most powerful means of enslavement of the Capitalists is the enslavement of our spirit. So many of my students have had their spirits crushed by Capitalism, stuck in a cycle of apathy and hedonism, not believing that they have the capacity to change the world for the better.
What is needed now is a great political and spiritual awakening of the oppressed. What is needed is a mass movement that has at its objective the revolutionary transformation of the whole society, a movement that has as its objective all power to be placed at the hands of the working class so that society’s productive forces can be shifted to care for and protect the people and the planet. In today’s conditions of record low union density, of a highly transient working class that is constantly in and out of different jobs, and of issues that far transcend simple workplace concerns, such a movement can only take place as the movement to build a political party of the oppressed.
Without the emergence of a mass-membership political party of the oppressed, a party of millions which ties together economic, local, and single-issue struggles, a party which provides real hope and inspiration to the people for what the world must be, a party which constantly injects the spirit of liberation into the masses, the oppressed of this country are doomed! This is precisely why I and many others hold so much hope for your campaign for President of the United States, because it holds the possibility of utilizing the biggest stage in US politics, reaching the ears of millions of people, millions of working class Democratic, Republican and Independent voters, and uniting the existing activist base to build and organize such a party.
The Democrats and Republicans are the two parties of Capital in the United States, both working in unison to ensure that the discontent among the oppressed is channeled to safe and controllable arenas. These two non-membership parties are highly centralized and disciplined, with their center being the funds and patronage ties given to them by the capitalist class. The capitalists use the parties to both suppress the masses and to resolve their internal differences through the process of capitalist democracy. The most dominant sections of capital like the Fortune 500 companies, support both parties, with the system effectively operating as a one-party state. The parties act as feelers into the masses, listening to their will and reflecting it through lies and other means of deception to mold their political consciousness, ultimately to be subservient to the Capitalist order. The parties serve to split up the working class into conflicting politics and create a mood of apathy and disengagement among the broader masses. The Republicans are drawing sections of the working class towards neo-fascism while the Democrats are trapping them with illusions of reform under present day neo-liberalism. A movement is desperately needed that breaks the grip of these two parties on the oppressed and creates a pole of attraction for the vast majority of people who seek an alternative to the two-party system.
While both Trump and Biden seek to cynically tap into the anger and frustration of the striking UAW workers with current conditions of employment for their own corrupt political ends, your statement of support was the only earnest one out of any Presidential candidate. While both Biden and Trump are propped up by Wall Street, the same owners of the Big 3 who the workers are currently fighting, it is only your campaign that truly represents the interest of workers. Your campaign has the potential to give a political voice to the hundreds of thousands of workers, the SAG-AFTRA workers, the Amazon and Starbucks workers, teachers, nurses, logistics workers, etc., who are increasing their level of strike activity against the same political enemy, Wall Street and the Fortune 500, the primary backers of the two-party system.
Your announcement on Twitter (now X) on June 5th, 2023 that you would be running for President as a third party candidate was a political tremor felt around the world. In the context of two highly unpopular and hated frontrunners on the Democratic and Republican Party lines, the prospects of a charismatic and renowned third party candidate, and the possibilities it opened up was and is being considered by millions around the globe. After advice from journalist Chris Hedges, your decision to ditch the People’s Party and instead run under the Green Party line was a great step forward, as that decision meant tying your run to a political project, with close to 250K registered voters, that has gotten the furthest in our present moment to building an independent electoral vehicle for the US working class.
I had the opportunity to talk to former Green Presidential candidate and long-time Green activist Howie Hawkins about your run. His first reaction to your run was “What the fuck?!” He had some concerns about how seriously committed you were to building a mass membership third party. In their last huge Presidential run, with the Ralph Nader campaign, Howie explained that the Green Party had a real opportunity to decisively fissure the duopoly and mark the beginnings of an alternative and independent working class political force in the country. According to Howie, Nader’s base of support during his Presidential run was much larger than the Green Party itself, and during his runs the Green party had the opportunity to rally the organizers and Nader supporters behind a mass membership third party. One wonders how history would have changed if the millions that voted for, and the thousands of volunteers mobilized by the Nader runs would have been organized into a democratic mass membership political party.
I have heard from Howie that he now has a lot more confidence in your campaign and is one of your campaign advisors. Since he has been one of the most vocal champions for the need of an independent party of the working class, writing a book justifying this need.
After announcing your switch to the Green Party you had tweeted: “In the spirit of a broad United Front and coalition strategy, I am pursuing the nomination of the Green Party for President of the United States”. During your first press release after full transition into the Green Party, it was written that “The campaign seeks to unite social movements, independents, labor groups and non-corporate political parties that are free from the stranglehold of billionaires, bankers and party bosses.” It was rightly pointed out that now was the moment to launch such an effort as it tracks directly to the will of the masses, as more than 62% of the people want an alternative to the two parties of Capital.
However, your bold statements immediately bring up the question, “how will the United Front be organized?” Is the aim of the campaign to simply rally these elements around support for your campaign, all for this unity to fizzle out after the campaign’s end? Or is the aim to build a United Front to break the two party system and form a mass membership party of the oppressed? How would such a party be organized?
While the two parties worked hand in hand to break the potential 2022 rail strike, I had helped Railroad Workers United, a rank and file organization of rail workers, pen and spread this open letter calling on Congress to reject breaking the strike to worker organizations and the general public. The thousands of signatures and hundreds of organizations signing on in support gave us a glimpse of the reality that there is a mass base of dispersed elements, independent of the two parties, who can and must be united. Your campaign for President and its three point political program, of dismantling the empire, unleashing democracy, and saving the planet, can be the vehicle to unite all of these elements. As you are already doing with appearances and speeches at events like the NYC Climate March, your presence on the front lines of the struggle will be a powerful motivator for the base human material, volunteers like myself to join your campaign and build it from the ground up.
Our efforts to spread the powerful message of the campaign will require us to doorknock, host public gatherings and rallies, and creatively think of ways to signal to the masses that a political party of the oppressed is in formation. Our collective efforts of hitting the streets, gathering support, raising social consciousness, and building the United Front movement will be the drums of liberation, making the people aware that a new force for freedom is growing, inspiring them to take action to save themselves and the world.
While initially the leadership of the campaign is chosen by you, by the end of the campaign the leadership must be chosen by the people rallied by your message. Your campaign should make it clear to all, that regardless of the final results of the vote, the end result of the campaign will be the formation of the mass membership party, a party that will break the grip of the two capitalist parties, a party that is led by the will of the oppressed, by the Wretched of the Earth. At the end of the campaign, it should be clear that a new mass membership political party of the working class has formed right at the center of the world’s premier military empire.
With this achievement, we can finally break the impasse that the oppressed have been subjected to since the failure of the 2016 and 2020 Bernie Sanders runs, the complete and utter failure of the effort to transform the Democratic Party to serve the interests of the masses. We can finally push forward the spirit of resistance to the powers that be, push forward the spirit of Occupy and the George Floyd rebellion, into the form of an organized political movement of the oppressed. We can finally turn the wheel of history, turn the dharmachakra into a new era, the era in which the party of the oppressed will gather forces, gain legitimacy among the whole of the people, to a point where it can force the capitalist class through whatever means necessary including the execution of general strikes, penetration into the rank and file of the state apparatus, and mass civil disobedience to bend to its will, to bend to the will of liberation.
I hope that this letter is read and its words seriously considered. Mr. West, I will do everything in my power to help build this campaign, pouring in the whole of my effort and energy during my time off of work, and am happy to devote my labor as are numerous other revolutionaries and freedom fighters across this country and globe. The oppressed are ready for a revolutionary change, we are ready for an independent mass party that represents our interests! Dr. West and the campaign leadership – seize the moment, unite the movement of workers and the oppressed, and build the party!
Best regards and solidarity,
Shuvu Bhattarai
