“I heard about Calero’s fight against deportation last year through my union,” said the member of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ, the building maintenance workers union. “That’s a good idea. We need more workers running for president.” He encouraged other unionists who were with him to pick up a copy of the Spanish-language socialist magazine Perspectiva Mundial.

Socialists who have fanned out across New York City since August 21 to campaign for the Socialist Workers Party ticket of Calero and running mate Arrin Hawkins are finding similar receptivity among many working people and youth. SWP members and supporters, Young Socialists, and others from around the country have joined campaigners from New York and New Jersey for an all-out effort to reach the thousands taking part in the protests leading up to and through the Republican National Convention.

“Our aim is to get as many books, pamphlets, subscriptions, and campaign leaflets as possible into the hands of those we meet on the streets of New York in these next 12 days,” Calero told the more than 40 volunteers assembled August 21 at the campaign center in Manhattan’s Garment District. “This is part of redeeming the effort we put in to collecting 30,000 signatures to put our party on the ballot. Now we are out on the streets of New York, campaigning for the working-class alternative.”

“I’m here for the duration,” said Jenny Johnson-Blanchard, a member of the Young Socialists who is planning to stay through the entire 12 days of campaigning. Johnson-Blanchard, 19, a student at the University of Minnesota, had joined in the petitioning effort over previous weeks to get the SWP ticket on the ballot in Minnesota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin.

“I’ve learned so much doing this, getting out and learning from other people’s experiences,” she said. “Campaigning on the streets and explaining what our party stands for makes me examine things more closely.”  
 
Ten-week sub drive, book sales effort
To complement the effort, partisans of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial have launched a subscription drive that begins August 28, on the weekend of the largest demonstrations in New York, and extends to November 7, a week beyond Election Day. They have set a goal of selling more than 3,000 subscriptions to the Militant and its sister publication in Spanish, Perspectiva Mundial.

The socialist campaigners are making full use of Pathfinder’s Supersaver Sale that offers steep discounts on an array of books and pamphlets (see ad on page 6). The questions posed in this year’s elections in the United States and the answers that socialists and other currents in the workers movement give to them are not new. They have been tested in the class struggle for more than 150 years. These books and pamphlets give working-class explanations to the main problems facing humanity and point a way forward to resolve them in the interests of working people.

As teams of volunteers return to the SWP campaign headquarters each day, a wrap-up meeting open to all interested in the campaign is held. These public meetings provide an opportunity to discuss the political questions posed in discussions on the streets, at plant gates, and protest actions. In particular, volunteers are honing their skills at popularizing and explaining the party’s campaign platform and the political realities from which it flows.

One of the questions discussed at these meetings is the SWP campaign’s support for workers right and pressing need to organize unions and defense of the labor movement from the bosses’ assaults. “It’s from this that flows our call for the formation of a labor party, based on the unions, that defends the interests of workers and farmers,” Calero said.

“How do we clearly explain and present in signs the demand in the SWP platform, ‘Support the efforts of power-poor semicolonial nations to acquire and develop the energy sources necessary to expand electrification’?” asked Sonja Swanson, a campaign volunteer from Miami. Swanson reported that her team had tried to use a sign with a shorthand version of this. “I found that the sign wasn’t to the point, and so it wasn’t effective,” she said. “It said ‘Expand electrification throughout the world. Two billion people in darkness.’ Two people came up to me and asked if we were from the electric company.”

“This is not a technical question, but a political one,” said Martín Koppel, SWP candidate for Senate from New York, at the next meeting of the volunteers to help initiate discussion on the question Swanson raised. “It has to do with championing the struggles of oppressed nations against imperialism and forging an alliance between workers and farmers the world over. Our signs have to capture that so it doesn’t look like an ad for Con Edison, or a crank scheme about electrification.

“This demand is not an abstraction, it relates to politics today,” Koppel continued. “Under the banner of ‘opposing nuclear proliferation,’ Washington and its allies are trying to block semicolonial nations from developing the energy sources required to meet basic economic and social necessities.

“For millions of people in the world, productive and cultural activity ends with sunset. The communist movement champions the efforts of oppressed nations to develop their economic infrastructure and raise their living conditions in the face of actions by Washington and other imperialist powers against them.”

Volunteers have come in to take part in the campaigning from other countries as well. As part of the 12-day effort, volunteers are setting daily goals on subscriptions and book sales. In the first four days, they sold 146 books, 20 subscriptions to the Militant and 4 to Perspectiva Mundial.  
 
 
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