40th Anniversary of La Raza Unida

January 17 is the anniversary of La Raza Unida. And this year marked the 40th. We had a general meeting and not much special here in Albuquerque. Looking at the needs of the US there is a need to approach things on a broader scale.

The winner take all voting system of the US requires that any electoral party have a broad enough platform to attract voters. The US culture of individualism, and generally anti-government libertarianism makes a labor or social democratic party extremely difficult. But, it is not impossible.

That is what we need now, a party, or parties that will engage working people as workers. We need unions to engage all workers as a class. The pretense that we are all "middle-class" doesn't confront the realities of the corporate-driven society we live in now. Class consciousness is difficult to develop in an individualistic society. But, it is not impossible.

We "left" or "progressives" or "radicals" need to learn and move forward. The sectarian ideological purity approach of the past didn't work then and it won't work now. We need to balance practicality and move toward our principles. We need to take what we can get and move forward. There are examples where third parties have made some inroads. We can learn from them and build upon them.

We need to be practical, we need to be connected to the communities we want to impact, and we need to build locally. There are many barriers to parties that represent working families. One of the main ones is the electoral system itself. It is tough, but not impossible!

Register Raza Unida by placing "LRU" in box 5 of NM election forms!