The only lasting alternative to the IMF and World Bank is to build a society where this system of corporations competing for profit cannot distort our values and control our lives. These corporations are accountable only to their shareholders, whose sole interest is to maximize profits. They are beyond the democratic control of the people. Essentially they are an un-elected dictatorship who have more control over our lives than our elected government. Maximizing profits means taking away power and resources from everyone else, whether they be workers, small businessmen, students, the poor or the elderly.

The only way to control these corporations is through ownership. 500 huge corporations dominate the world economy. Their power even dwarfs some medium size countries. The only way to get back control of our economy and build a genuine democratic political process is by putting the top 500 corporations and banks that dominate the economy under democratic public ownership. Only in this way can this cancer at the heart of our society be removed.

Many attempts have been made by elected governments to manage these corporations, to make them kinder and nicer. The result has been that the huge corporations and their owners subvert the political process and throw the country into crisis in order to protect their interests. This can be done through economic sabotage as in France in the early 1980s when the Socialist Party government was elected, or in more extreme cases through a military coup, as happened in the 1973 coup against popularly elected Socialist Party President Allende in Chile.

The most powerful force on the planet is the working class. Without their labor, nothing would move. It is the working class that produces the food, raw materials, steel, automobiles, and computer software. It also drives the buses, unloads the ships, tends the sick, teaches the young and does the day to day running of the government. The working class is the only force in society that the capitalists can not do without. Today, the American working class is numerically more powerful than ever. The formerly great mass of small farmers and shopkeepers have dwindled to a tiny proportion of society, gobbled up by big agribusiness and giant retail outlets like Wal-Mart. Into the workforce have come millions of working women who have left the isolation of their homes and emerged as a strong force to advance the interests of the working class. Thus today, over 110 million people gain their primary means of subsistence by receiving a paycheck for a living. If you include their families (their children and retired parents), the working class is the overwhelming majority of the population.

The key task for realizing this power is for workers to become conscious of their power and to get organized in workplaces, communities, and colleges. When workers become conscious of their interests as a class, they would then see that they have interests separate from big business on every major issue that faces America and the world. From such an understanding, the conclusion workers will draw is that the working class ultimately needs its own political party to be able to challenge the corporate parties for power. That is why we campaign against giving any support to the Democrats - a party of big business - and instead fight for the building of a mass workers party.

The only viable alternative to global capitalism is a global socialist system. Karl Marx explained that since workers create the wealth, then the workers can run the economy without the capitalist class. He explained that the capitalist class does not contribute anything to production. Far from profit being the motor of the economy, as is repeated everyday, the role of the capitalist is destructive, since if he cannot make a profit, he will lay off workers, close plants and destroy good productive factories. These mass layoffs leave productive workers on the streets unemployed, more metal on the scrap market, and the nation much poorer.

By the working class coming to power and creating a democratic plan of production, involving all sections of society, then the economy can be taken out of the blind and destructive forces of the market place, and directed in a way that best meets the needs of the majority. In essence this is democracy being introduced into the economy. Thus, economic decisions would be made by the majority, for the majority, rather than by the minority in the interests of the minority.

But how could such a new socialist society be created? How do we take power from the 500 top corporations? The answer lies in the huge potential power of the working class. Time and again in the last 150 years, the workers' movement has challenged capitalism. In the U.S. there was the Seattle 1919 General Strike. There was the general strike in France in the summer of 1968 that shut down France for three weeks. In these situations the owners of the big corporations and the big business political parties have found that they control nothing but offices. The workers run every workplace in our societies from transportation, electricity to the computer systems. Even the army and police are run by ordinary workers. In all big movements of the working class the ranks of the soldiers and police have shown great sympathy for the workers' movement. During the general strike in France in 1968 President De Gaulle was told by his military generals that the soldiers and police were totally unreliable as an instrument to defeat the workers' movement. As in many other movements it was the lack of a clear conscious leadership that kept this movement from taking power and successfully changing the system.

Our organization, Socialist Alternative, fights for the coming to power of a workers' government. Of course, a workers' government which began to implement its socialist policies would immediately face massive resistance from big business. In this situation, the workers' government would need to rally workers and youth to its support. Through mass demonstrations and introducing workers' democratic control at all levels of society, including the armed forces, the newly elected leaders of the working class in Congress and the Presidency would not become isolated, but would rest on the huge power and strength of a mobilized and conscious working class, who make up the vast majority of the population. In that way, big business, and the forces it would try to mobilize, would become isolated and defeated. By introducing exchange controls, any attempt by the rich to send their capital overseas would be stopped.

A national review would take place of the productive resources available to the incoming workers' government. It would then start to reallocate economic resources to provide for the needs of workers in all areas of their lives. The first priority would be to provide decent clothing, housing, health care, food and other basic needs. At the same time, resources would be put into making education, retraining, music, sports and other important cultural activities available to everyone. Also, by sharing out the work, the workweek could be reduced to 30 hours a week.

All of this could be financed out of the profits, rent and interest that goes to the richest 1%, and the huge boost such a program would give to the economy. By bringing the banks and insurance companies into public ownership and out of the profit-making business, then finances would be available for those projects that need them, rather than the banks being the personal speculating tool of the top 1%. An enormous amount of new wealth would be created by these programs. This would allow decent wages to be paid to all workers.

Socialist policies would be tailored to creating long-term stability - good long-lasting products, decent housing, etc. There would be no gains to be made from short-term profit, shoddy materials and defective products, which are so profitable under capitalism. The environment would be seen as an asset for future generations, and would be protected. Housing would be built to last, and its value would be available to workers for longer. This would easily cover the cost of constructing it.

A workers' government committed to implementing socialist policies would expand democratic rights into all areas of life. This would include the rights of students, parents and school workers to participate in running the schools and colleges. It would extend workers' democratic control to the workplaces. It would take the newspapers, TV, Hollywood and the radio stations out of the hands of the tiny minority who presently control them. All areas of the media would be open to all groups in society that can prove they have support in society. With today's and tomorrow's technology, an educated and less stressed population could gain easy access to all the information they need to participate in decision making at all levels of society.

The coming to power of a workers' government committed to reorganizing society along socialist lines, with the full participation of workers in the major decisions, could transform the lives of every worker, youth and senior citizen. Insecurity, fear, hunger, and discrimination based on sex, race, or sexual orientation would be ended. Although the scars inflicted on this generation by the system would not so quickly heal, future generations would be spared the anguish of the present generation. By democratic accountability at every turn, and through the participation of every person in running society, a new world could be built.

The ideas of socialism are not foreign to the working class in the U.S. or other countries. They are the only ideas that consistently meet their real needs. At times of increased crisis and struggle, they have continually re-emerged. From their first appearance in the middle of the 1800s, to their growing support in the early 20th century, and to their reemergence in the 1930s, they have appeared in different forms and been represented by different organizations throughout American history.

More recently, big business whipped up McCarthyism in the early 1950s in an attempt to exterminate the traditions of the 1930s and the support for the ideas of socialism. However as the black revolt of the 1950s and the 1960s continued to grow and strengthen, new traditions of militancy re-emerged. The black revolt was an inspiring struggle by the most oppressed section of US society, leading to new organizations and leaders who broke with the Democratic Party and who began to challenge capitalism. In the last years of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. began to move more clearly toward seeing the struggle in terms of a struggle of classes. In 1966 he said, "The movement to date has done much for the middle class but little for the black underclass. We are dealing with class issues. Something is wrong with capitalism...maybe America must move toward democratic socialism." In August, 1967, he said, "the movement must change itself from a reform movement to a revolutionary movement. We must see the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are tied together and you cannot get rid of one without getting rid of the other." He also spoke of the need to unite blacks and labor, and he increasingly gave his resources to union organizing drives. When he was shot in Memphis he was there helping garbage collection workers who were on strike. He was also in the process of organizing the poor people's March on Washington.

In 1965, Malcolm X, after his break with the Black Muslims, said, "the system in this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. You cannot have capitalism without racism." Bobby Seale, leader of the Black Panther Party, said in 1968, "We do not fight racism with racism. We fight racism with solidarity. We do not fight capitalism with black capitalism; we fight capitalism with socialism...The very nature of the capitalist system is to exploit and enslave people, all people. So, we have to progress to a level of socialism to solve these problems."

In coming to power, the working class could reach out to workers across the globe. Workers in the US would end the big-business policies of using foreign policy to suppress and hold down movements of workers in other countries, to ensure higher profits for the US multinational corporations. The technology of the US could help transform these countries if power was in the hands of the workers and small farmers.

A socialist US would be a beacon to workers around the world. It would lead to the largest movement of workers ever, as the chief protector of dictators and generals, US big business, would have been removed from power. Dictatorships would fall, and revolutionary movements would erupt around the globe. In fact, US workers would look to help all the genuine workers movements around the world to organize their own movements and to come to power.

Instead of the world being a market for exploitation by a handful of huge multinational corporations, under socialism it would be organized to unite the resources and skills of workers to improve the conditions of all workers. A new world could be built without wars and without starvation and famine. The largest US export to many countries would no longer be military supplies, but equipment, and skilled labor to help them build up their economies and transform their lives. A democratic socialist workers' government would be able to reverse the present environmental catastrophe, and begin to work to construct an economy which would maintain the long term health of the planet.

With a democratic plan of production, and an end to the artificial distortion of national economies in the underdeveloped world because of their plunder for cheap raw materials and foodstuffs by the big corporations, then industry could start to develop around the world. This would transform these national economies. They could then start to provide the products needed for their own populations. This would then lead to the end of the division of the world into a few rich advanced countries, and the remainder of the world living in abject poverty, not by driving down the wages of workers in the more industrialized countries, but by raising up the wages of workers around the world to the highest levels.

With power taken out of the hands of the ruling classes around the world, the present wave of wars, civil wars, and ethnic cleansing would end. There would no longer be a small minority who would gain by exploiting a larger land mass or by holding down a national minority. Then democratic decisions could be made about how different communities and nations wish to live. The principle of self-determination of nations would be established as a democratic right for all peoples. With democratic socialist policies, a socialist federation of the world would allow the harmonious development of all the peoples of the world.

The extreme neo-liberal policies of IMF and World Bank are a product of capitalism in a period of global economic decay. Any effective fight against the IMF and World Bank must be linked to building a powerful movement against capitalism itself, and to replace it with an alternative system. We believe the only viable alternative is democratic socialism.

How else can we control the corporate pollution of the globe? How else can we ensure that the peoples of the world have enough to eat? How else can we end the domination of the poorest countries of the world by the multinational corporations that have distorted and destroyed their local economies in search of global markets and cheap raw materials? How else can democracy be defended and expanded in the face of the huge media machines which now straddle the globe? It can only be done by a genuine coming together of the people of the globe based on mutually supporting economies controlled by workers. In other words, we need to fight for global socialism. The task may be large, but the time is right. We urge all those who agree with us to help mobilize against the IMF and World Bank and at the same time join our organization in the struggle to build a new, socialist world.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has greatly discredited the idea that socialism is a viable system. There, a bureaucracy rose to power on of the back of a workers revolution, and strangled that workers revolution. With its military rule, its denial of workers rights, its denial of basic democratic freedoms and its political oppression of the working class, the Soviet Union had nothing to do with the ideals of genuine democratic socialism. In a genuine socialist society the economy would be under the democratic control of workers and their communities. All political officials and managers would receive the average wage of those they represent, and they would be elected and subject to recall. Democracy is essential to a planned economy.

Trade in Women

A rising export industry is in women, especially from Asian countries. In Indonesia, for example, women migrants to the Middle East increased from 8,000 in 1979 to over 100,000 now. In the Philippines, women composed more than 60% of the 675,000 documented overseas workers in 1994. The majority of women migrants are service workers -- domestic helpers, entertainers and related work -- subject to harsh living and working conditions and vulnerable to sexual abuse and violence. Mortality rates of Filipino migrants -- measured conservatively by the number of migrants whose bodies are flown back to the Philippines on commercial carriers (a newly lucrative business, according to the airlines) - are far above the national average. In addition, they suffer ills common to all migrant workers: separation from their children and families, racial discrimination, cultural shock and social isolation in host countries and social and economic reintegration problems upon return. Of the 2800 Filipino maids that work in the US, 2000 are employed by staff at the World Bank and the IMF! (1)

IMF mandated cuts in social spending hit the poorest the hardest, and among the poorest, have a devastating and disproportionate impact on poor women and children. When social services are eliminated, women expected to take on the extra burden of caring for sick parents and children and so on. Women's labor is key to "attracting the transnational investment that is integral to globalization. It is young women ... who populate Nike, Wal-Mart and other sweatshops from Haiti to Indonesia ... Hundreds of thousands of women from countries like the Philippines have been encouraged to seek work in other countries when none is available at home. Living as strangers in foreign households, these women send cash to their families, but sacrifice the legal protections of citizens and often face sexual abuse and physical intimidation. Other women are forced into prostitution and the sex tourism industry." (2)

1 "Bailouts for Bankers, Burdens for Women" (http://www.50years.org/factsheets/bailouts.html)
2 False Profits, p.13

Repressed, Sweated, and Underpaid:
Labor Under the IMF and World Bank

A 1994 World Bank report on Asian economies praises them for their efforts to keep the labor movement week. The report states:

"In Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and China (and to a lesser extent Malaysia), the government restructured the labor sector to suppress radical activity in an effort to ensure political stability. Governments abolished trade-based labor unions and pushed the creation of company - or enterprise-based - unions... Labor movements in Indonesia and Thailand, while not subject to systematic restructuring, were nonetheless routinely suppressed... Singapore courted foreign investment in labor-intensive manufacturing suppressing independent unions and assuring investors industrial peace." (1) The study astutely concludes by noting the chief benefit for investors from the suppression of labor is "higher profits."

In their search for high profits, retailers such as Wal-Mart, The Gap, Disney and Nike produce the vast majority of their garments and shoes in sweatshops in the poorest countries in the world. The vast majority of sweatshop workers are women.

In Central America they set up factories in free trade zones, or maquilladoras. Just in El Salvador alone 68,000 workers are sewing together garments for export to the US market. Over 80% are 17 to 25 year-old young women. The factory owners feel that young women are more docile, and at the peak of their eye-hand coordination. Most enter the factories with a 6th grade education, robbed of the chance of a decent education. These young women often have to bear the burden of supporting the whole family on the miserable wage of 35 cents an hour, working 60 to 80 hour weeks under abusive managers in unventilated factories where the temperature soars to over 100 degrees. They are forced to work piecework, with quotas set at unattainable levels. One young woman said she sews buttons on over 1,100 shirts/day but still cannot afford to buy milk for her baby, who struggles to survive on a diet of coffee water.

The women are forced to take birth control pills in front of supervisors so they will not miss work. These birth control pills are not the same as those sold in the US. Instead they are experimental drugs, which are cheaper but have horrible side effects which the drug companies refuse to acknowledge. If workers attempt to organize a union to improve their conditions, they are immediately fired and blacklisted from ever working in the maquilladoras again.

El Salvador doesn't have the only free trade zones in Latin America. These zones proliferate in countries such as Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and throughout the world in poor countries. Free trade zones are totally deregulated utopias for multinationals. In order to attract foreign investment, countries establish special free trade zones with hardly any taxes, environmental regulations or other regulations. Unions are totally forbiden, and often governments supply corporations with armed troops to guard their factories and keep workers in line. Free trade zones are the logical conclusion of capitalist policies: all social and human considerations are sacrificed to the absolute highest law, profit.

1 Quoted in Eric Toussaint, Your Money or Your Life: The Tyranny of Global Finance

Support for Dictators

These policies are not accepted easily in the semi-colonial countries where their effects are seen most directly. Resistance from workers, youth and poor farmers to neo-liberal attacks if often fierce, taking the form of mass protests, general strikes, riots, and even insurrections. Under these conditions, national governments, the IMF and World Bank are left with little choice but to clamp down on democratic rights and attempt to ram their unpopular program through using undemocratic means, even if this means dictatorship, mass murder, etc.

For its entire history of the World Bank has supported almost every dictator on the planet - as long as they supported capitalism and toed the line of Washington. Starting right away in 1947, the Bank loaned $195 million to the Netherlands, which allowed them to finance their war to keep Indonesian a Dutch colony. In 1972 the Bank ended all lending to Chile after a radical Socialist party came to power in a democratic election. After the government was brutally overthrown in a US organized and backed military coup lead by Gen. Augusto Pinochet the Bank resumed its lending to Chile. The Bank loaned billions to the Suharto regime in Indonesia a few years after the General executed a military coup, killing an estimated one million people in the process. The Bank extended massive loans for brutal regimes such as Zaire's Mobuto Sese Seko, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and the apartheid regime in South Africa to a name a few.

These loans were used by dictators to strengthen the forces of repression at their disposal, enrich themselves a few select cronies. Yet today - after most of these crooks have been overthrown - the IMF and World Bank are insisting that they get repaid their loans. The Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt relief asks: "Must the victims of oppression be expected to pay the cost of their own torture and imprisonment?"

Environmental Destruction:
Opening Markets and Dumping Garbage

The practice of dumping toxic and nuclear waste and trash in the former colonial world - encouraged by IMF and World Bank free-market ideology and policies -- raises questions of Environmental Racism. Lawrence Summers, when he was the World Bank's chief economist (he is currently President Clinton's Secretary Of The Treasury), let the cat out of the bag when he wrote a memo to senior World Bank staff in 1991 that read:

"Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of dirty industries to the LDCs [less developed countries]? ... The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that. I've always thought [that] under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. The concern over an agent that causes a one-in-a-million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country where under-five mortality is 200 per thousand." (1)

Although the World Bank later apologized for the memo, in practice Summers's proposals have been carried out. Due to trade liberalization Western countries have been increasingly dumping waste in poor countries. Unmarked drums of highly toxic chemicals are often just dumped. Guinea-Bissau has agreed to store 15 million tons of waste over five years for a payment of $600 million - three times the country's gross national product. The maquilladoras on the US/Mexico border house highly polluting industries, creating a "virtual cesspool and breeding ground for infectious disease" as described by the American Medical Association. The consequences for these communities' health and the environment are disastrous. In one maquilladora town, Metamoros, babies are 30 times more likely to be born encephalic (born without a brain) than the Mexican average. (2)

IMF and World Bank policies orient economies towards exporting commodities to generate hard currency. Nations turn to their natural resource base, rapidly overexploiting their resources through unsustainable forestry, mining, and agricultural practices that generate pollution and destabilizes ecosystems and ultimately threaten future trade earnings. A clear example is forest loss. Lumber is a quick and easy way for poor countries to make money. Between 1990 and 1995, forest loss for the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) greatly exceeded the rate of forest loss for the world. The two Central American HIPC countries, Nicaragua and Honduras, lost almost 12% of their forest, which is 7.5 times greater than the world rate. Approximately 75% of these HIPC countries had an IMF SAP at some point during this time period. (3)

Environmental programs are often are eliminated when SAPs dictate less social spending. In Brazil, government spending on environmental programs was cut by two-thirds to meet the fiscal targets set by the IMF. (4)

1 Quoted in Vandana Shiva, "International Institutions Praacticing Environmental Double Standards," 50 Years Is Enough: The Case Against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Kevin Danaher, ed. (Boston: South End Press, 1994) p. 102-3
2 Global Warning, p.79
3 Food and Agriculture Organization. 1997. State of the World's Forests.
4 Schemo, Diana Jean. 1991. "Brazil Slashes Money for Project Aimed at Protecting Amazon." New York Times. (January 1, 1999)]

Inequality Under Capitalism

• The three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries.

• The world's 225 richest individuals, of whom 60 are Americans, have a combined wealth of over $1 trillion--equal to the annual income of the poorest 47% of the entire world's population.

• 1.3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on $1/day.

• 3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on $2/day.

Source: United Nations Human Development Project Report, 1998.

The Committee for a Workers International:
On the Frontlines Against Neo-Liberalism

In Kazakhstan, a former Soviet Republic rich in oil and mineral resources, the US-backed dictatorship of Nursultan Nazarbaev has placed the country's economy under the dictates of the IMF. The privatization schemes mandated by the IMF have reduced whole regions of the country to impoverishment and hunger. Born from the struggle against the IMF-backed privatization policies has been the 100,000 strong Kazakhstan Workers Movement (KWM), a sympathizing section of the CWI.

As thousands of protesters gather in DC to battle the IMF and World Bank here, US Secretary of State Madeline Albright is in the statehouses and boardrooms of Kazakhstan securing the position of US multinationals such as Exxon and Chevron. In the streets, protests mount against the recent imprisonment od KWM leader and CWI member Model Ismailov. He is charged with "addressing an illegal meeting;" a demonstration against unemployment and high prices. In 1998 Ismailov was imprisoned for a year for "insulting the president" and nearly died due to the conditions there.

In early April, Ionur, another CWI member and leading figure in the KWM (he was recently elected Secretary of the Trade Union committee of striking metallist workers in Uralsk) was arrested, severely beaten, and held for seven days on charges of "drunkenness". This is part of the dictatorships repressive methods to defend their power and privilege.

In the teeth of state repression, the KWM has organized campaigns, demonstrations, and ongoing strikes against the IMF-imposed austerity drive. Though illegal, the CWI-led KWM has become the rallying point of Kazakhstani workers and youth looking to fight against neo-liberal policies. For the most far-sighted activists and leaders throughout the semi-colonial countries, the process of globalization has made it clear that combating the crushing poverty and political repression means combating global capitalism, and linking up internationally through the CWI in the struggle for socialism.

In Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, the CWI has built the most powerful Marxist organization on the continent - the Democratic Socialist Movement. The DSM is playing the leading role pulling together alliances and mobilizations against the neo-liberal agenda of the new "democratic" regime.

The DSM has led the movement against the privatization and commercialization of education, campaigning against rising fees, reduced resources and deteriorating dormitories. In July 1999 a far-right group secretly supported by university authorities assassinated several prominent student leaders at Obafemi Awolowo University. Mass mobilizations organized by DSM followed by the massacre, and the student movement has gained ground against government repression and austerity.

At the same university several years ago, DSM students were expelled for organizing protests against the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni environmental leader who took on Shell's polluting oil operations in Nigeria. Recently, union militants have led the movement against public sector cutbacks. They organized a massive public sector strike in the state of Lagos demanding a higher minimum wage.

Building an International Movement for Socialism
The ruling class organizes around its global interests through the IMF, WB, WTO and Thousands of other formal and informal networks and organizations. Precisely because capitalists organize for their interests on a global scale, working people are compelled to do the same if they hope to wage an effective struggle against big business. The Committee for a Workers International brings together the collective experience of workers, farmers, students, and community activists struggling for socialism in 35 countries around the world and on every continent. While big business understands that its interests can only be maintained through a global neo-liberal offensive, the CWI argues that regular people across the globe can only achieve a lasting peace, a sustainable environment and a good standard of living for all through an international socialist transformation of society.

Fight Global Capitalism!
Build the Socialist Alternative!

Socialist Alternative is an organization of workers and young people. We fight for jobs for all; free national health care, childcare and education; a $12.50/hour minimum wage or $500/week guaranteed income; a 30 hour work week without loss of pay; defense of public jobs and services; an end to pollution and the development of safe, cheap and renewable energy sources. We support democratic socialism: public ownership of the major corporations, banks and industries under democratic workers control and management; and democratic planning of the economy by working class people as the solution to the crisis, racism, poverty, and exploitation of capitalism.

Since capitalism has created a global market system, we have organized a worldwide movement for socialism, the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), in 35 different countries on every continent. Socialist Alternative is the US section of the CWI.

Socialist Alternative played a leading role in mobilizing against the World Trade Organization in Seattle. We helped begin and build the anti-WTO movement at the University of Washington and Seattle University that brought over 2,500 students to the demonstrations.

We fight against racism, sexism, homophobia and all forms of discrimination. In San Francisco we sponsored the "Bayview Hunters Point Reparations Act" ballot initiative which received over 40% of the vote on March 7, 2000. This referendum proposed the creation of a democratically-elected neighborhood Council to administer a $150-Million fund to create jobs for residents of the Bayview and waved all City takes for five years for homeowners and small merchants in the neighborhood as reparations for the racism and discrimination the mostly African-American residents of the Bayview neighborhood in San Francisco have endured. The Bayview is the least developed neighborhood in San Francisco. 80% of the City's sewage is processed in the Bayview. The highest rates of asthma in children, breast and prostate cancer to be found in the US are in Bayview Hunters Point. The unemployment rate in this neighborhood is more than double than in the rest of San Francisco.

We campaign for building a mass workers party, independent from the Democrats and Republicans to bring together and fight for the interests of workers, young people, unions and environmentalists. We have played a leading role in initiating and building the recently created Labor Party, which unions representing over two million workers have formed. In San Francisco we have built a broad coalition to run independent candidates against the political machine and have received between 9-30% of the vote since 1996.

We fight to transform the unions into democratic and fighting organizations by building rank and file caucuses.

We need you to help us fight social injustice and the destruction of the Earth. If you liked what you read in this pamphlet, you should join Socialist Alternative, and fight for a new, socialist society!

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