LCIP NATIONAL CONFERENCE 2024

“Breaking the Grip of the Two-Party System”

Sunday, March 24, 2024 – 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM (Pacific)

Online conference – Click here to Register Today: See below!

“The will to fight back is strong. Let us harness this fightback for a winning strategy for political power. We must seize the moment. …”

– Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP)


ONLINE CONFERENCE, PLEASE REGISTER TODAY:

The Crisis Before Us

Every day, every hour, every minute that passes, hundreds of tons of bombs are dropped on the Palestinian people in Gaza – children, women, and men are murdered, buried, and mutilated by weapons ”MADE IN THE USA.” Sixty thousand people have been killed or seriously injured; tens of thousands more are threatened with imminent starvation and disease; 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced, their homes and the infrastructure in Gaza destroyed.

Gaza is not the only U.S.-funded war. For the past two years, a war has raged in Ukraine. It’s a war that both sides acknowledge could last many years, if not decades — a war that has already taken 500,000 military and civilian lives (315,000 in Russia alone), a war funded and supplied by the U.S. and European governments.

Another arena of direct U.S. military intervention and war funding is Africa, where the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has built 46 various forms of U.S. bases that station thousands of U.S. troops with the aim of promoting U.S. strategic interests throughout the continent.

There is more to be said about the U.S. war build-up against Iran and, in the longer term, against China. In all these cases, U.S. arms manufacturers – especially Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon), and Northrop Grumman – are raking in billions in profits while the Democratic and Republican governments slash domestic spending for health care, public housing, education, social services, public transportation … and more.

Working people, and youth in particular, are facing an escalating war at home linked to the wars abroad. Black liberation activist Erica Caines explained this inter-connection: “AFRICOM is the flip side of the domestic war being waged by the same repressive structure against Black people in the U.S., notably through the construction of multiple ‘cop cities’ across the country.”

Growing Resistance

Segments of the U.S. working class and oppressed communities are beginning to implement a class-struggle fightback against the employers and the U.S. government. To cite a few examples:

  • Since early October 2023 – in unprecedented mass actions – more than one million people have taken a stand in support of Palestinian self-determination, flooding the campuses, streets, city council chambers, and numerous union halls. On January 13, 2024, an estimated 400,000 people assembled in the streets of Washington, D.C., to demand a ceasefire, an immediate, permanent and unconditional halt to the bombing, an end to U.S. aid to Apartheid Israel, a lifting of the siege on Gaza, and an end to the occupation.
  • Many unions, large and small, have come out for a ceasefire in Gaza, contradicting the political line of the Democratic Party and the trade union officialdom. (This stance in support of the ceasefire opens the possibility for further organizing and collective action by these and other unions.)
  • Strike action is back in the public and private sectors.
  • A rank-and-file labor upsurge to democratize the unions and transform them into instruments of class struggle has brought fear into the boardrooms of the corporate giants.
  • More than 25 million people took to the streets nationwide in 2020 to protest the police killing of George Floyd.

The will to fight back is burgeoning. Now we need to harness this fightback into a winning strategy in the political arena, one with an independent perspective that can achieve the goals of the working-class and oppressed. This will require that the U.S. labor movement break with the Democratic Party – its subordination to the Democratic Party is a major obstacle to defending our rights and winning our demands.

Union, community, and political activists and their organizations came together six years ago and formed Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP) around two Points of Unity, both of which are premised on our understanding that the bosses have two political parties and working people and the oppressed need a party of our own.

  • Point 1: The need to advocate for and promote a working-class party – a labor party – rooted in the labor movement and communities of the oppressed, as well as an independent Black working-class party linked to the struggle for a labor party.
  • Point 2: The need to promote the fight for a labor party within the unions by organizing labor party rank-and-file caucuses that are based on the resolution in support of a labor party that was adopted by the October 2017 National Convention of the AFL-CIO. It is time to go beyond words of support to independent political action and to begin implementing this resolution, starting with running independent working-class candidates for local elections, such as for city councils and school boards.

LCIP also developed a strategy – we call it a building blocks strategy ­– to get the ball rolling through the formation of local grassroots assemblies that develop a fighting, united-front platform and nominate candidates mandated to advocate and promote the fightback platforms. The candidates would also champion the fight for a labor party on a national level.

We Must Seize the Moment!

Rarely in recent U.S. history has there been such an opening to build the foundations of an independent working-class party.

“Genocide Joe” is less and less popular, as he implements an increasingly right-wing agenda of increased funding for wars and interventions on every continent – an agenda that could become a World War III conflagration if this reactionary course is not stopped. Rail workers also remember when Biden invoked the anti-union Railway Labor Act to prevent a nationwide railway labor strike.

Growing numbers of youth, Arab Americans, Black people and union members are disenchanted with the choice of Biden or Trump in November 2024. At a UAW convention rally in late January 2024, in the presence of Biden, 10 UAW activists denounced from the convention floor the UAW President Shawn Fain’s endorsement of Biden. One of the UAW activists, Johannah King-Slutzky, declared loudly: “A president who supports genocide and sends millions of dollars in funds and weapons to Israel to kill children and families does not deserve our support!”

These growing numbers are looking for an independent, pro-working-class alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties.

Providing that alternative, growing LCIP, and mapping out a few areas where LCIP-endorsed candidates could run for office at the local level with our proposed strategy of labor-community assemblies is the aim of LCIP’s National Convention 2024. This will be a zoom conference open to all who share this vision and wish to promote it across the country.


CONFERENCE AGENDA

(Conference Agenda may change up to and including the date of the Event as we are still confirming Panelists. Panelist affiliations and organizations listed for ID purposes only.)

Opening Presentation: Connie White (LCIP Continuations Committee)

PANEL NO. 1:

The Deepening Capitalist Crisis and Moving Forward to independent Working-Class Political Action

Panelists:

  • Gary Votour (South Carolina Workers Party)
  • Desiree Rojas (President, Sacramento Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA))
  • Jonathan Martin (Progressive Party Builders)

PANEL NO. 2:

Black Liberation and the Fight for Independent Black Working-Class Politics

Panelists:

  • Khalid Raheem (Chairman, New Afrikan Independence Party)
  • Petros Bien (Ujima People’s Progress Party (UPP))
  • Lisa Knox (Immigrant Rights attorney, activist and organizer)

PANEL NO. 3:

Voices for Palestinian Self-Determination: End the Gaza Genocide

Panelists:

  • Member, Palestinian Youth Movement
  • Mya Shone (LCIP Advisory Committee and Coordinator of the 1988 End All Aid to Apartheid Israel, For a Democratic Secular Palestine appeal)
  • Omar Altamimi (CAIR Sacramento)
  • Monadel Herzallah (Arab America Trade Union Council; Plaintiff in a lawsuit charging Biden and his administration with Genocide)

PANEL NO. 4:

The War at Home: Arms Budget Soars as U.S. Working-Class Suffers

Panelists:

  • E.J. Esperanza (Immigrant rights activist and organizer)
  • Sandy Eaton (Steering Committee, Labor Fightback Network)
  • Millie Phillips (LCIP Continuations Committee)

Closing Presentation: Alan Benjamin (LCIP Continuations Committee)


There is no fee to attend and participate in LCIP Conference 2024. Please make a Donation of any amount to assist with financing – and consider an ongoing monthly Donation to LCIP organizing.


Symptom: 1.7 MILLION voters in 33 states and D. C. cast ballots, in 2016, without voting for a president.

Solution: We — political, trade union, and community activists from different political backgrounds — have decided to constitute ourselves as the Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP). Join Us.

#Break2PartyGrip