Over the next few weeks, the Socialist Alliance will be distributing 200,000 "postcards to John Howard" demanding the Australian government withdraw its troops from Iraq. The cards will be distributed from campaigning stalls outside screenings of Michael Moore's new documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11 and through door-to-door and street canvassing.
The "Bring the troops home now!" postcards echo the message going out to millions of people around the world through Moore's record-breaking documentary film. As the postcard puts it: "Howard, like Bush, is waging a war on the poor, stealing Iraq's oil to feed business profits."
As each day passes, it is becoming clearer for people all around world that the US-led invasion of Iraq did not "liberate" the Iraqi people. And the whitewashing inquiries into the WMD lies that were used to justify the invasion are provoking more public disgust at John Howard, Tony Blair and George Bush.
The next Australian federal election, like the last Spanish national election (in which the conservative and pro-war Aznar government was ousted), is shaping up as a referendum on the war in Iraq.
The Socialist Alliance's "Bring the troops home now!" postcards promote an online poll to bring Australian troops home from Iraq. The online poll is on the fast developing Socialist Alliance website (< http://www.socialist-alliance.org).
The Socialist Alliance is using the internet to articulate and organise opposition to the war and the Howard government. Groups of activists are linked not just by the website but work together through several different e-lists. Members and volunteers are coming in every day through the Socialist Alliance website.
Mainstream electoral campaigning has increasingly distanced itself from any sort of direct interaction between candidates and voters and as a result alienated more and more people from involvement in politics. Young people in particular seem to be most alienated.
According to the web monitoring company Hitwise, 32.6% of visitors to Australian political websites are between the ages of 25 and 34. Younger voters tend not to buy newspapers and they tend not to watch current affairs programs on television. Instead, they are going to the internet for political information. According to Hitwise, the top rating political websites in Australia are Michael Moore's website and the Green Left Weekly website.
The Socialist Alliance will attempt to use the "Bring the troops home now!" postcards to mobilise young people against the pro-war Liberal-National Coalition in the coming federal election.
The postcard campaign will draw more people to the Socialist Alliance website over the coming weeks. But it is not just "electoral marketing". The Socialist Alliance is not just another player in the gaudy pseudo-democratic show of modern-day capitalism, because we know that social change will not be the result of politicking but rather the work of millions of people turning everyday resistance into a movement for their own empowerment and liberation.
Our electoral campaigning is an extension of our everyday participation in progressive community struggles. Socialist Alliance candidates are out there working with communities, trade unionists, parents at schools, Aboriginal communities, migrant groups and other working people. We are organising protests to defend public services, close the refugee detention centres and to bring Australian troops home from Iraq.
The Socialist Alliance's election campaign is aimed at engaging with this everyday resistance against the pro-war, corporate profit-first agenda and projecting this resistance into the political arena.
We aim to bring together the latent power of every Fahrenheit 9/11 screening with that of every trade-union picket line and every community struggle for child care into a united political movement. That's a big challenge, but building such a movement is the only hope for a different sort of society.
Jorge Jorquera
[The author is a co-convenor of the Socialist Alliance federal election working group and the manager of the Socialist Alliance website.]
From Green Left Weekly, July 28, 2004.
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