OUR PROGRAM

OUR PROGRAM

OHIO FOR THE WORKERS, NOT THE BILLIONAIRES

This campaign is about more than a single election – we need a complete reconstruction of society. We are building a socialist movement to end the rule of the billionaires once and for all.

Why Ohio Needs Socialism

Ohio has been hit hard. Billionaires have gutted our cities of jobs, destroying our ability to build a dignified life in the towns we love. They’ve flooded opioids into our communities while they pocket billions in profits. Rural hospitals are at-risk for closing due to continued cuts to Medicaid. And politicians, backed by big-money interests, have refused to meet our needs as working people while the cost of living goes up. In fact, 39% of Ohio’s households live at or below the Federal Poverty Level line. The Ohio State Legislature’s solution is to raise the minimum wage to $11 an hour but Ohioans would need to make at least $22.50 an hour to comfortably afford a two-bedroom apartment. Over 1.2 million jobs in Ohio do not pay enough for everyday people to afford the cost of living while the gap between income and rent continues to increase. 

Black, immigrant, and rural communities are the hardest hit in Ohio. Enough is enough! Millions of Ohioans shouldn’t have to worry about fronting most of their paychecks towards their rent. We shouldn’t have to worry about how high our electricity bills are due to data centers (that we didn’t ask for) being built in our communities. We are experiencing the largest wealth transfer from the bottom up by billionaires in the House, Senate and the White House. It doesn’t have to be this way though. Workers in Ohio contribute billions of dollars to the state’s economy yet it's the CEOs, Democrat and Republican politicians that benefit from the wealth we create.

Instead of trying to just survive each day, we need to be thriving as workers who create the wealth of Ohio! That’s why our campaign is fighting for socialism – where the majority of working class people have the political power to create a planned economy to meet the people’s needs and planet over profit. Our socialist program is rooted in the fact that this is possible; we just have to organize and fight for it!  

WHY WE NEED TO BUILD A SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

Every issue dealt with in this platform, and every injustice working people experience in society, boils down to the question of who has power. Under the current capitalist system, a tiny handful of ultra-wealthy bankers and corporate executives have the power and will to do anything to maintain it. We stand for socialism — a system where poor and working people hold political and economic power and use it to meet the needs of all people and to preserve the planet. So many problems could be solved by measures that are common sense to any worker, but are unthinkable under the rule of the billionaires. 

Humanity is hurtling off the tracks towards massive existential crises — climate catastrophe, massive job losses due to unmanaged artificial intelligence, and war between the US and other nuclear-armed powers. The capitalist government has no answers to these crises, and is in fact driving them forward, acting as a servant for the Big Banks, Big Tech, Big Oil and the Military-Industrial Complex. In every crisis that the people face, whether it’s hurricanes, wildfires or pandemics, the government has proven itself to be totally inept and to only care about profit. They can’t steer us away from crises — they are part of them. 

The government made concessions in 2020 to prevent the system from collapsing, which actually helped people –— a moratorium on all evictions and utilities shutoffs, suspended student debt payments, expanded Medicaid, expanded unemployment assistance, and stimulus checks, among other things. But instead of extending these measures, it rushed to immediately eliminate them, and now housing, public health and debt are in even worse shape than before. 58% of the country is living paycheck to paycheck, the cost of everything has skyrocketed, and the ten richest men have doubled their fortunes. But both parties are saying that nothing can be done — that this is just how the economy works. 

That’s a lie. The resources exist to resolve the problems humanity faces. The only things that stand in the way are the politicians that manage affairs for the billionaires who generate super-profits from workers all over the globe. 

Instead of a tiny clique of billionaires and hedge funds running and deciding everything, the diverse working class needs to control the commanding heights of the economy and come up with long-term plans to get out of the mess they created. Only a revolution, not an election, can end the rule of the billionaires once and for all, but this program shows how we can get started.