Let’s make a revolution!

On Tuesday, April 16, 2013, the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party will be holding precinct caucuses. Anyone can attend and anyone can put their name forward to be elected as a delegate. Delegates elected at the precinct caucuses can attend ward conventions a week or two later. Delegates at those conventions will be asked to endorse candidates for City Council, and later at a city convention they will be asked to endorse a candidate for mayor. If, for instance, you live in the 11th or 12th Ward your council member voted to give the billionaire Zygi Wilf $650 million of our tax money to pay for his new Vikings stadium. As a delegate those candidates for re-election would have to ask for your vote. Further, you could advocate for things like municipal ownership of the electricity. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I am proposing that we form a Farmer Labor Caucus. The Farmer Labor Party, until it was merged and purged by Hubert Humphrey, was a radical populist party. The 1934 Farmer Labor Party platform said: “Capitalism has failed and should be abolished. We mean to establish a Cooperative Commonwealth.”

Governor Floyd B. Olson said at that Convention: “I am what I want to be. I am a radical. I’m not a liberal. We need a definite change in the system.” If you believe in those principles, then please join with us in the Farmer Labor Caucus and attend your precinct caucus April 16. You can find out where your caucus will be held by going to http://www.dfl.org/ You don’t have to swear fealty to the DFL. You can be critical of Obama’s drone wars and Dayton and Rybak’s stadium giveaways. But the precinct caucus is the best opportunity you’ll have to talk to your neighbors about politics. It’s where progressives, labor people and feminists hang out. They need us. We need them.

What do you think?