Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Finally, A Refreshing Change From The Republicrats-Socialist Alternative’s Danny Keating Throws His Hat in the Ring in New Hampshire's Second Congressional District

Click on the headline to link to the Committee To Elect Danny Keating Facebook page.

Press Release

Independent Candidate Danny Keating For U.S. Congress In New Hampshire's Second Congressional District

Mr. Daniel “Danny” Keating, a construction worker and Iraq War Army Veteran raised in Nashua, has filed papers with and has been officially notified of his status as a candidate, pending getting the requisite number of petition signatures, by the New Hampshire Secretary Of State’s Office to run as an independent candidate against incumbent Republican Congressman Charles Bass his 2012 Democratic Party opponent, Ann Kuster. If elected to Congress Mr. Keating will accept the wages of an average worker in New Hampshire and donate the rest of his salary back to social justice causes. Danny is a member of Socialist Alternative and has worked tirelessly on campaigns for workers' rights and against budget cuts. Danny will bring the voice of the 99%, into a Congress that is dominated by corporations and big money.

Here are Danny's remarks made at the opening event of his campaign:

I am running for Congress as an Independent and a member of Socialist Alternative because the two parties of big business, Democrats and Republicans, have carried out deep and unfair budget cuts, stepped up attacks on civil liberties and immigrant rights, assaulted women's core rights to control their bodies and their lives, and have let further corporate control in this country go on unfettered. These are all symptoms of a sick and unresponsive system.

Trillions, yes trillions, of dollars have been handed over by the federal government to the big banks that have thoughtlessly and viciously kicked people out of their homes, scandalously dodged their taxes and helped to wreck the American and global economy. Both parties, controlled by big business, are complicit in the corporate domination of politics and our lives.

I propose some alternatives to the chaos churned out by Wall Street and Washington. We need a massive job creation program to hire workers at union wages with full benefits and rights in order to rebuild infrastructure, stop environmental destruction, and provide necessary social services. We could pay for this by closing corporate tax loopholes and increasing taxes on corporations and the top 1% as well as slashing spending on the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. If corporations threaten to take their operations off-shore (like many have already done) in response to paying their fair share then we should take those companies' resources into public ownership with democratic workers' and community control and management using the resources for the benefit of all.

We can only win a jobs program through mobilizing a massive movement of community groups, political organizations, and unions that protest, educate and build democratically-run organizations. A mass movement for jobs and services and against racial injustice, sexual inequality, seemingly never-ending layoffs, unconscionable home foreclosures and drastic budget cuts should be connected to a political struggle against the two parties and the corporate domination they represent. We need a party of working people, run democratically, with elected representatives who are accountable to working people and are pledged to accept only the wage of the average worker.

Elected representatives of the two major parties, having long been left to their own devices, have not created progressive social and economic change. We saw this after the elections of Barack Obama in 2008 and the Tea Party-dominated Congressional agenda in 2010. To get real change we need a big protest movement. This type movement has created change in the past: from the labor movement for unionization and a 40-hour work week to the civil rights movement against racial injustice to the women's movement for equal rights mass demonstrations have shown that direct action can win real victories. If I am elected to Congress I will be a voice for these struggles against the capitalist system and for a better future democratic socialist society.

For more information about the campaign, Socialist Alternative, or requests for interviews call: 603-233-2999 or email:danny.keating.for.congress@gmail.com

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