Barry Porster, 1969
Barry Markham Porster, July 7, 1947-
VP candidate for Workers League (aka Independent) (1988)
Running mate with nominee: Edward Winn (1937-1995)
Popular vote: 18,693 (0.02%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
In their second national election, the Workers League once again nominated Edward Winn for President. The VP slot was filled by Barry Porster of Hamtramck, Mich.
The 1988 Workers League campaign told the media their election program boiled down to three main points:
1. The international unity of the working class in common struggle against capitalism.
2. The building of an independent Labor Party, based on the unions, to fight for a workers' government.
3. The need for a socialist program to abolish the profit system.
In a campaign statement the League lumped both major parties together: "In the 1988 presidential elections, workers are confronted with two matched sets of millionaire politicians. Wrapping themselves in the American flag, both the Democrats and the Republicans are standing on the same anti-labor program of budget cuts, mass unemployment, union busting and national chauvinism."
Porster elaborated on that: "The election process under the capitalist system is basically a fraud. The growing disgust and hatred of workers and students for both parties is being shown in their refusal to vote. The conditions are maturing rapidly for the development of a third party."
The Workers League platform included:
Nationalize basic industry and the banks under workers' control and without compensation to the capitalists, and establish a planned socialist economy to put an end to unemployment.
Immediately establish a 30-hour work week at 40 hours pay to create jobs at union wages for every worker.
Launch a massive multibillion dollar program of public works to put millions to work building new housing, hospitals and schools.
Reopen the closed plants, placing them under full workers' control and ownership.
Restore immediately all social benefits lost by workers.
Pay unemployment benefits at a level necessary to maintain a decent standard of living for laid-off workers and their dependents.
Establish free medical care for all at state expense.
Wipe out illiteracy by boosting spending for the construction of new schools and hiring of teachers. Free higher education for all.
Establish free and comprehensive day care facilities for the children of all working.
Pay a living wage to all retired workers.
Defend the unions. Rehire the PATCO air traffic controllers and all other workers who have lost their jobs, been imprisoned or victimized due to union busting.
Oppose all imperialist war plans and defend all oppressed nations. Defend the gains of the Russian Revolution as well as the reformed workers' states of Eastern Europe, China, North Korea and Southeast Asia against imperialism. Full support to the working class of the Soviet Union, Poland, China and all other workers` states in the struggle to overthrow the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracies through the political revolution.
1988 would be the high point in terms of popular votes for this Trotskyite party, even after they changed their name in the mid-1990s to the Socialist Equality Party. The Winn/Porster ticket was on the ballot in 8 states + DC and placed dead last in five of those. Their strongest showings were: Illinois 0.15%, Ohio 0.12%, and District of Columbia 0.11%.
Election history: none.
Other occupations: Workers League Central Committee, author, Workers League Presidential Elector (Mich.) 1992, labor editor of The Bulletin (the party newspaper)
Notes:
Graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, 1969
Joined the Workers League in 1971
Several sources, including the overrated Wikipedia, erroneously report that Helen Halyard, the 1984
running mate, was also the 1988 VP. Like Porster, Halyard was a resident of Hamtramck, Mich. at
the time she ran in 1984 and had joined the Workers League in 1971 as well.
