On May 4th VOTE Pablo Iglesias-UP. Join Izquierda Revolucionaria!
In the next elections we have a lot at stake. Working families, the hundreds of thousands of unemployed, all of us who live in the working class neighborhoods and the cities of the south and have suffered the policies of the PP must turn out en masse to the ballot boxes.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso has taken over the discourse of Vox and together, with the extreme right of Abascal, wants to impose her recipes on us for four years more. She speaks of "freedom or communism". But what kind of freedom is it? The one that enriches its businessmen friends with real estate deals while they condemn us to evictions; the “freedom” that persecutes our immigrant brothers and sisters instigating racism; the “freedom” that sends us to unemployment and exploits us with endless working hours in exchange for miserable wages. Their freedom degrades our neighborhoods by sowing them with gambling dens.
It has also meant that Madrid holds the record for mortality during the pandemic, and that 6,000 of our elderly died abandoned in privatised nursing homes. Their freedom makes gold for private health care while it devastates primary care in the outpatient clinics. What good is this freedom to us workers and youth? Let's not fool ourselves. The leader of the privatisation of public health and education represents the business elite who have lined their pockets with corruption.
Ayuso boasts of being on the right side of history when she is called fascist. She and her party, direct heirs of a dictatorship that murdered left and right, pretend to lecture us on freedom. But those who imposed a gag on the people, those who based their "order" on macho violence against women and the most despicable homophobia, are precisely the opposite of freedom.
For a left that fights back against cuts and the right wing
On May 4 we must defeat these reactionaries, but without forgetting that voting is not enough. We know that the coalition government between PSOE and Unidas Podemos is not doing what it should. Instead of appealing to mobilisation to achieve what is right, they are appealing to appeasement and giving in to the big economic powers: at the end are these big owners who are imposing their own interests.
Pedro Sánchez could have repealed the labour reform and the Gag Law but he has not done so. Evictions continue because housing policy is still controlled by the big speculators and vulture funds. The PSOE leadership cheers the monarchy, covers up the corrupt fortune of Juan Carlos I and votes together with the PP, Vox and Cs to prevent Parliament from investigating about it. It also freezes the minimum wage and prepares a new pension counter-reform. When we compare the Minimum Living Income with the 200,000 million euros that have been handed over to the IBEX 35 and the banks, we can easily understand who benefits from governing by accepting the logic of the system.
The fact that Pablo Iglesias has to denounce that Pedro Sánchez and the PSOE are systematically breaking the signed agreements says it all. It is the recognition that it is not possible to make left-wing policies if the financial oligarchy is not touched, if the reactionary institutions of the regime of 78 are given in again and again.
When Iglesias decided to take on Ayuso and Vox in Madrid, he aroused great expectations. It is no coincidence that the right wing and its media squad, and also Ángel Gabilondo and the rest of PSOE spokesmen, launched their most visceral attacks against him. But we have to be honest. The ultra-right cannot be fought with slogans or gestures, nor with government agreements that do not touch the privileges of the powerful, but with a genuinely left-wing programme that fights unemployment, social cuts and privatisations, and mobilises the immense strength of the working class to make it possible.
Of course, it would be a mistake to believe that these elections do not matter. Of course they matter, and very much so. That is why, without any sectarianism but in a critical way, from Izquierda Revolucionaria we call on the youth and workers of Madrid to vote this May 4 for the candidacy of Pablo Iglesias and Unidas Podemos.
WE ARE STRONGER THAN THEM! ON MAY 4th EVERYONE TO THE BALLOT BOXES! VOTE Pablo Iglesias-UP!
Join the Izquierda Revolucionaria. An organisation of workers who fight for the socialist transformation of society, against fascism and racism. We actively participate in class unions and social movements, promoting workers' struggles and struggles for social justice. We are part of the Sindicato de Estudiantes and the anti-capitalist feminist movement with Libres y Combativas. And this is our programme:
- Defend public health care: Massive investment in outpatient clinics. Nationalisation of private healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. Free private patents on vaccines.
- A shock plan to rescue public education. Total free education from kindergarten to university.
- Prohibition of evictions by law. Expropriation of empty houses owned by banks and vulture funds to create a public housing stock with social rents.
- Full repeal of labour and pension counter-reforms.
- Unemployment benefit of 1,200 euros per month.
- Against macho violence and patriarchal justice. Full rights for the trans community.
- Dignification of our neighborhoods, no more gambling dens. Incorporate into the public network all the community and city council services that have been privatised.
- Free transport for the unemployed, for young people under 30 and for the over 60s.
- No more police violence and criminalisation against youth! For the right to vote at the age of 16.
- In defence of freedom of expression: End the Gag Law!
- No more racism! Repeal of the Law on Foreigners and the CIE. Right to vote for the migrant population.
- Stop the environmental catastrophe with a socialist and ecologically sustainable planning of the economy.
- Nationalisation of the banks in order to build a real social shield to put an end to unemployment and poverty.
- For the socialist republic.
