Ujima People’s Progress Party
Originally published on 10/13/2019
Statement by Ujima People’s Progress Party in Support of Labor & Community for an Independent Party (LCIP)
Nnamdi Lumumba, Organizer, Ujima People’s Progress Party, Baltimore, MD
Since the launching of our campaign, the Ujima People’s Progress Party has called for the building of an alternate electoral option for working-class people.
It has been obvious to us that support for the capitalist duopoly control of the electoral process has undermined the interests Black, Brown and working-class people. The support working people give to imperialist parties and their politics in the form of our votes, donations and political action to advance capitalist/imperialist interests only deepens our own misery.
Black workers, as well as all workers, must engage in independent political action to fight for our interests and oppose the actions of imperialist forces which threaten to take more and more resources from working and poor peoples. On the state and local level, we have called for a political party that is anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and fights to empower Black, Brown and working-class people. There must be a national voice for these same calls and using the electoral process is opportunity to raise the consciousness of working-class people.
Politics is more than elections and voting but, in this era, it has become the most obvious form of political participation for the masses. We understand elections as non-violent struggles between elements of the ruling class for control of the State apparatus to implement policy to advance their economic interests.
On both the local and national levels, elections rarely offer working people options for transforming the world, so helping to break with active or even passive support to capitalist, imperialist and white supremacist parties has been a fundamental key goal of our efforts to build a Black workers-led electoral party.
There is a need to contend with the ideas of the ruling class in all political arenas. In addition to the local struggles workers must carry out on the electoral front, we have long supported the call for the national Labor & Community for an Independent Party work. Such a formation would unite the grassroot struggles of working people and put them squarely on the table for debate against the capitalist parties.
Working-class people need solutions that are anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. They need to be organized and mobilized around policies that oppose imperialism, oppression and the exploitation of nations for their resources or cheap labor. The ideas from the two ruling class capitalist parties stunt the vision and unity of working people not only in this country but all over the world; the very justness of these ideas must be challenged.
As opposed to the parasitic and paternalistic relationship that the ruling class parties have forced upon Black, Brown and other oppressed peoples, we support a national labor party that recognizes both the shared and independent struggles of oppressed workers on the job as well as in their communities.