Elections under capitalism are a hoax to keep workers worldwide dreaming of a change of conditions in their lives and New Yorkers are no different. The city’s municipal workers are without contracts and haven’t had raises in years. Hospitals are closing, leaving millions of workers without access to accessible healthcare. The NYPD continues to shoot black and Latin youth at will. Schools function as prisons for our mostly black and Latino student population. With more militaristic charter schools opening and so-called failing schools closing, students and staff are displaced. More and more workers are homeless. As the NY Times recently pointed out, many workers must work two or three jobs and still can’t afford the exorbitant rents. Many have no jobs at all.
Due to the racist nature of capitalism, black and Latino workers bear the brunt of these racist attacks. The gap between the super-rich and the working class, employed and unemployed, grows wider all the time. In New York, the racist inequalities of capitalism are on full and brutal display.
Meanwhile, many workers in the city are eagerly awaiting the November 5 mayoral election. Why? Because the Democratic candidate and probable winner, Bill DeBlasio, talks about racism and proudly shows off his interracial family. He talks about taxing the rich to provide prekindergarten for all. Because he got arrested at a demonstration to keep one of Brooklyn’s largest hospitals open. Because he says he wants to end the racist stop-and-frisk policies of the New York Police Department.
But no matter how worker-friendly a picture he paints, DeBlasio has a job to do for the bosses who control city government. Like all politicians, his assignment is to keep their capitalist system running as smoothly as possible.
In the current economic crisis, with the U.S. on a permanent war footing against its imperialist rivals, belts are being tightened at every level of government. It is the mayor’s job to keep New York and its workers in check for the bosses. That means city worker salaries must be kept within the limits of the budget. It means schools must teach students capitalist propaganda more efficiently. It means the NYPD must maintain its role as a cutting-edge force in security and surveillance, along with shooting black and Latino youth. It means that real estate profits and Wall Street interests must come first to keep the billionaires’ investments flowing into the city.
Since winning the Democratic Party primary in September, DeBlasio’s campaign fundraising events read like a who’s who of the U.S. ruling class, from $25,000-a-plate breakfasts brokered by Hillary Clinton to pow-wows with the top brass of Citigroup, Viacom, Goldman Sachs, and the law firms that serve them. He met with BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager and a major shareholder in Massey Energy, the capitalists whose criminal negligence and greed killed 29 West Virginia miners in 2010. He’s been hard at work to set these bosses’ minds at ease that his pro-worker public statements were nothing more than campaign rhetoric.  
The main danger of liberals like DeBlasio is that they put a friendly face on the rulers’ racist, anti-working class policies. They play a critical role in building fascism and sending unemployed students off to fight and die for U.S. imperialism. DeBlasio has already lulled many workers into believing they don’t have to organize or fight back. Once their “friend” is inaugurated, this thinking goes, he will keep the hospitals open, end the test-based evaluation of teachers, sign contracts granting raises, and put a stop to racist police brutality.
Obama, DeBlasio:
Capitalist Stooges
But workers have been on this roller coaster before. Not so long ago, Party members and friends wore buttons saying, “It’s not just Bush, it’s capitalism.” We worked hard to convince workers that Obama could never solve our problems because he was bought and paid for by the ruling class. The five years since then have proved us right, as Obama has plunged the country more deeply into war and economic crisis,  bailing out GM and the banks while tens of millions remain jobless.  
We can’t let slick liberal politicians like Obama and DeBlasio win our friends, classmates and coworkers to believe that elections can save them from the disasters of the profit system. As communists, we know that capitalism contains a basic contradiction: Workers don’t earn enough in wages to afford the products they produce. We know that capitalism relies on racism and sexism to keep workers divided. We know that no capitalist politician — Asian, Latino, black, or white — can change those hard realities. We know that any small concession they make will be taken away in a heartbeat, whenever the bosses feel the need to increase their profits to compete with China, Russia, and other imperialist powers.  
Even after DeBlasio is elected, we must continue to share this message with other workers and students. We must expose the politicians’ hoax everywhere we encounter them. As our friends become disillusioned by the liberal misleaders’ results, we must help them to see that the only alternative to the capitalist trap is to unite and build a whole new system — to fight for a communist revolution.