This is how Martín Koppel, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate in New York, opened his remarks while addressing a few dozen students September 22 at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) here. He took the microphone shortly after a member of the Haitian student club announced the formation of their organization. Students standing around the club’s literature table had been discussing the solidarity effort under way in New York’s Haitian communities.

SWP candidates had been invited by BMCC students to campaign at a Club Info Fair, where student groups set up tables and passed out literature about their activities. They spent all afternoon talking to youth who came by the table—distributing campaign literature, selling the Militant, Perspectiva Mundial, and books, and inviting them to upcoming campaign activities.

During the program, in which members of the student government and campus clubs spoke, the SWP senatorial candidate was invited to say a few words. Koppel pointed to the drive to cut wages, lengthen the workweek, speed up production, and roll back social gains that the employers and their twin parties are carrying out.

To defend themselves from this assault, many workers are seeking to use their unions or to organize unions, and the Socialist Workers candidates support workers’ right to do so, he said.

“Whether Republican Bush or Democrat Kerry wins the elections, we can be sure that the next administration is going to take the next steps in assaulting working people at home and waging wars of plunder abroad,” Koppel said. “The Socialist Workers campaign offers a working-class alternative to these two parties of imperialist war and exploitation. Our campaign gives you a reason to vote for something you support, not vote against someone you hate.” He pointed to the example of the Cuban Revolution, where workers and farmers took political power and transformed society in the interests of the majority.

Koppel said that the Socialist Workers campaign platform starts with the world. He pointed out that the situation in Haiti is not unique. More than 2 billion people in the world, he said, one-third of humanity, don’t have access to any modern form of electricity. That’s why the socialist campaign supports the efforts of the power-poor semicolonial countries to acquire and develop the energy sources necessary to expand electrification, a prerequisite for economic and social advances. “We also call for exposing the drive by Washington and its allies to prevent the nations oppressed by imperialism—such as Brazil, Iran, India, and north Korea—from developing the sources of energy they need, including nuclear power,” he stated.

A number of youth who heard the talk came over to the campaign table to meet the socialists. “I really agree with your message. I’d like to find out more about this,” said one student, Katrice.

Afterward, Estevan Nembhard, a member of the National Council of the Young Communist League (YCL), affiliated with the Communist Party USA, took the mike and took sharp issue with the SWP candidate. “How can someone call himself a socialist, say he is for the working class, and tell people not to vote? You got to get Bush out of office,” he said, arguing that voting for Kerry was the duty of everyone who supports progress.

In subsequent discussion between Nembhard, BMCC students, and Arrin Hawkins, the Socialist Workers candidate for vice president of the United States, the YCL leader claimed that V.I. Lenin, the central leader of the Bolshevik revolution, had argued that revolutionaries had to be “with the masses” and that today this meant supporting the Democratic Party. Anyone who didn’t do so was lending support to the “fascist” Bush, he said.

In response, Hawkins asked for the microphone. She described how the U.S. rulers use the Democratic and Republican parties to gang up on working people. Revolutionary leader Malcolm X had explained that the U.S. rulers “always show you a wolf to get you to run into the hands of the fox,” she said.

“If you do vote, don’t waste it on a vote for the Democrats or Republicans. Vote for the working-class alternative, the Socialist Workers ticket.”

Hawkins said that the Bush administration is not “fascist,” any more than the previous Clinton administration was “liberal.” Both of the two main capitalist parties, she said, have shifted to the right and are carrying out the program of the ruling class, the top priority of which is to squeeze more profits out of the labor of working people. “With either the Democrats or the Republicans, working people lose,” the socialist vice-presidential candidate said.

When students nodded in agreement as Hawkins spoke, socialist campaigners approached them and invited them to come to the table to continue the discussion. After the end of the club fair, a debate among students continued at the student government offices.

In informal discussion with students, Hawkins also pointed out that, unlike what Nembhard said, Lenin forged the Bolshevik party to lead the workers and peasants of Russia in a revolution to take power out of the hands of capitalist exploiters. The October 1917 Russian Revolution, she said, was also carried out against another “socialist” party, the Mensheviks, who were for class collaboration with the parties of the bourgeoisie.

After a successful day of campaigning, the socialists met with students to pursue further opportunities for the SWP candidates to speak on campus.

The previous week a BMCC student who is a Militant subscriber interviewed Koppel for Voice of the Voiceless, a student paper. She also helped arrange for the socialist campaigners to be invited to participate in the campus fair.

Koppel is taking a leave from the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial staff for a few weeks to campaign full-time. Socialist Workers campaigners in New York are putting together a plan of speaking engagements, media interviews, campaigning at plant gates and in workers districts, and teams to Buffalo and other cities in the state.

On October 11, Koppel will take part in a debate with two other senatorial candidates, David McReynolds of the Green Party and Donald Silberger of the Libertarians. The debate will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the State University of New York in New Paltz, about an hour and a half north of New York City.
 
 
Related articles:
Haiti floods: a social, not a ‘natural,’ disaster
Imperialist plunder is cause of deadly toll
Unconditional aid to Haiti now!  
 
 
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