II. Participatory Democracy & Socialism

We strive to overturn the current bourgeois definition of democracy as being exclusively limited to electoral procedure. Ours is a Participatory Democracy that transcends narrow concepts of citizenship and imposed political borders. We actively reject any and all governments, laws, national borders, and definitions of citizenship that deny us full enjoyment of our human and democratic rights. Furthermore, within a Participatory Democracy the right to choose your sexual orientation is respected.

We want freedom of communication and information, bridging the digital divide, with access to science and technology. Control of knowledge and information is one of the keys to maintaining effective control over a colonized people. Through the domination of all means of transferring knowledge and ideas such as schools, newspapers, television, radio, the internet, etc., colonial institutions dictate and manipulate the ways of thinking and acting among raza. Without understanding our true history, culture, and identity as La Raza, self-determination is impossible. This is why Unión del Barrio considers one of the most pressing tasks confronting our movement is making people aware of the basis of our oppression, to develop national, continental and international consciousness, and through this consciousness, concretize a revolutionary process to the masses.

We seek social and economic justice, and defend the collective interests of the poor and working people of Nuestra América. Fundamental to our independence is the development of an economic and social order that will see the masses of La Raza as owners of the product of our labor, and exercising collective control of the economy. We are victims of the common enemies of all working people in the world – capitalism and imperialism. It is for this reason that Unión del Barrio recognizes itself as a socialist organization, fighting for the liberation of our lands, our class interests, and on the side of all oppressed peoples. Under a unified and socialist Nuestra América we must share the human, intellectual, scientific, military, medical, and natural resources of the nations of our continent, and raise the quality of life for all people. We seek to advance political unity among the international working class, and will never unite with bourgeois, capitalist, neo-colonialists, who actively unite with imperialism, exploit their own people, and choose to advance their individual self-interest over the interests of all others.

GO TO WHAT WE WANT, POINT III: “The Absolute & Unequivocal Liberation of Women.