final project

Socialism, American Style

It’s still got a sting from the Cold War era, but more and more people are open to the “S” word to continue the fight for the 99 percent.

BY JOHN HOBBS

His epiphany sounded a lot like machine-gun fire.

Mimi Soltysik, 37, and his girlfriend Lynn Lomibao, 42, were in South Los Angeles, giving away bikes to impoverished children when they heard a loud, metallic rat-tat-tat from afar.

The volunteers were frightened. But the children seemed unfazed, continuing their bicycle safety lessons as before.

“We asked the director [of A Place Called Home] why the children didn’t flinch,” Soltysik said. “He said the children were used to hearing that sort of thing.”

It wasn’t just the children’s reaction that upset Soltysik.

“The director told us there’s no grocery store in the area,” he said. “If these families wanted to get a gallon of milk, they’d have to go to a liquor store where they’d pay twice as much as the families in Bel Air or Brentwood.”

Soltysik said he felt pained that the neighborhood’s residents were being victimized by a system that seemed to favor the wealthy.

As a tax-paying resident, Soltysik worried he was contributing to the situation.

“One day while I was online, I began searching for an organization,” Soltysik said. “I wanted a place where the pain I felt [for this neighborhood] could be channeled into a positive effect.”

That was when Soltysik, a consumer advocate, and his girlfriend Lomibao, a nonprofit development professional, stumbled upon the Socialist Party USA website.

Lomibao and Soltysik joined more than 1,000 Americans registered with the Socialist Party USA.

California has the highest concentration of socialists, with more than 100 living in the Golden State.

Soltysik said after reading the party’s goals—providing universal healthcare, offering free college education, rebuilding neighborhoods and implementing a more balanced tax structure—he knew he had found a system congruent with his personal beliefs.

“For working people, I don’t see any evidence of the success of capitalism,” said Soltysik, the Socialist Party of California’s male chair. “I see capitalism being a success for maybe the executive board of the largest corporations on Wall Street, but for working people, I see it as an abject failure.”

Nearly 60 percent of Americans have a negative reaction to the word “socialism,” according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. Soltysik blamed Cold War mindsets for the stigma.

“As those who were alive during the Cold War begin to leave the public debate, younger people are entering for whom the Cold War is just a historic relic,” he said. “So I think those misconceptions are beginning to wither.

To that end, the same Pew Research Center poll reported nearly 50 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds actually had a positive view of socialism.

At its height last year, the Occupy movement had branched out to nearly 100 cities across the nation, exposing more and more young people to the fight for the 99 percent, themes shared by the Socialist Party USA.

“I think a lot of the things that people hear at the Occupy movement and a lot of people’s personal experiences since the recession has piqued their interest in socialism,” Soltysik said.

Like the majority of Occupy protesters, Soltysik said socialists are disheartened by Obama’s four years in office, even as right-wing conservatives—including one-time Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry—ding him for being a socialist.

In a recent Forbes magazine article, writer Paul Roderick Gregory questioned whether or not President Barack Obama, often derided as the socialist-in-chef by conservative circles, is, in fact, a socialist.

“By ‘socialist,’ I do not mean a Lenin, Castro, or Mao,” Gregory wrote, “but whether Obama falls within the mainstream of contemporary socialism as represented, for example, by Germany’s Social Democrats, French Socialists, or Spain’s socialist-workers party?”

Citing similarities between Obama’s beliefs—greater access to healthcare, progressive taxation on the rich, a general distrust of the free market system—and the November 2011 Declaration of Principles of the Party of European Socialists, Gregory concluded Obama is, in fact, a socialist.

“I don’t think there’s been a policy that Obama’s enacted that is socialist,” Soltysik countered. “He’s as capitalist as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.”

It was disillusionment with Obama that drew Alex Mendoza, 35, a small business owner in Dallas and the Socialist Party USA’s 2012 vice presidential candidate, to split from the Democratic party.

“I did not classify myself as a socialist until after Obama became president,” he said. “I supported Obama [in 2008], and I believed in a lot of his policies, but then it became evident a lot of those policies were not being implemented.”

Mendoza said he was disappointed that the president did not support the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would have made it easier for workers to form unions.

He also said the Affordable Health Care Act was a failed opportunity.

“As socialists, we believe in socialized medicine. In his health care act, he threw a bone to the insurance companies [with the individual mandate], giving them millions and millions of new customers and didn’t even consider single-payer.”

Soltysik, who’s working as the campaign manager for the Stewart Alexander-Alex Mendoza presidential bid, said the candidates’ experiences as working-class people makes them ideal for the Oval Office.

“Our elected officials are typically all cut from the same cloth,” he said. “They’re carefully crafted and shaped into these hollow, disconnected used car salesman types.”

He said the socialist candidates, who are aiming to get on the ballots of at least 22 states, including California—getting on state ballots can be costly—really care about the issues and want to effect real change.

“I personally believe that the general public really needs to hear these guys right now,” he said.

Mendoza said—win or lose—the ultimate goal of his vice-presidential run is to educate the masses about socialism.

“It’s very clear that there’s a failure in the system when 1 percent of the population controls 35 percent of the wealth,” Mendoza said. “To believe that the free market is going to trickle down all of its benefits into workers’ pockets historically has not happened.”

Were the Stewart-Mendoza ticket elected, he said there are several steps his administration would take during their first 180 days in office to put the country back on the right path.

“We definitely want to put together a path to socialized medicine, right off the bat,” he said. “We’d bring troops home and those billions of dollars [saved] would stay here and get reinvested into our communities and social programs.”

Mendoza said they’d also suspend the Bush tax cuts, make sure workers’ rights were protected and end all tax subsidies to oil and gas companies.

“I think people are starting to realize that the system is broken,” Mendoza said. “This whole idea of a laissez-faire free market capitalism that was supposed to be perfect for everyone is just failing.”

“I think we’ve all been hoodwinked by the idea that we’re living these decent middle class lives because we can afford cheap products like a flat-screen TV, an iPhone, a laptop,” said Lomibao, who’s taken on the position of female vice chair of the Socialist Party of California. “But most families can’t afford to send their kids to college without that child going in to deep debt.”

If the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney wins the general election in the fall, Lomibao said she thought it would help drive scores of voters to the socialist party.

Lomibao has had personal experience with Romney’s venture capitalist group, Bain Capital. She said the group bought a company she used to work for.

An executive board of three people was installed to “clean house,” cutting two-thirds of the work force that had invested decades of their lives into the company and suddenly found themselves unemployed, Lomibao said.

“I think if Romney were elected president, you would see this sort of restructuring happening on the macro level,” she said. “Maybe it would be just the thing that would get people up in arms. I think it would [ultimately] strengthen the socialist party.”

Mendoza admitted that his vice presidential ambitions hit a little closer to home than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

“I hope when [my kids] are old enough to go to college, they’ll not have to go into debt just to get an education,” he said.  “I hope they can have healthcare and find employment that gives them a living wage.”

He said his vision for the country is not out of reach.

“This is not just attainable in a few generations,” he said. “It’s something we could do. If we get elected, changes could take place immediately.”