Hawkins referred to the struggles of garment workers at Point Blank Body Armor in Oakland Park, Florida, and the Co-Op coal miners in Huntington, Utah, to explain how workers are seeking to organize unions to defend themselves against the bosses’ assaults on their jobs, wages, benefits, working conditions, and dignity.

The ruling class has a one-point program, she said: trying to increase its profit rates by lengthening the work day, workweek, and our working lives, speeding up production, and forcing workers to work overtime while millions remain unemployed. “We not only need to defend ourselves on the economic level—we need to organize independently of the employers in the political arena as well,” she noted. “We call for the launching of a labor party, based on the unions, to fight in the interests of workers and farmers.”

“Do you support an increase in the minimum wage?” asked one person from the audience. The socialist candidate responded that the $1 increase in the minimum wage, an initiative proposed on the Florida ballot, is a paltry sum that would not bring wages to a livable level. “Workers with a family who make $10 or $12 per hour can barely make ends meet today. My campaign calls for raising the minimum wage to union scale, to what unionized workers in the building trades get,” she said.

“Do you support school vouchers?” was a second question. In explaining her opposition to school vouchers, Hawkins said there are two kinds of education in capitalist society, “one for the working class and one for the ruling rich. The children of the working class are taught to be obedient and to submit to authority, to the boss. We have a different concept of education, where education is a lifetime right for all, not something you do until you are 18 or 22. Socialists call for workers getting time off work every few years for six months or so to study what they want, and with full pay.”

Betty Castor, Democratic Party candidate for U.S. Senate, also spoke at the panel. “We’re going to take Florida back,” she said, explaining her support for the Kerry campaign. Mark Stufft, an independent candidate for Senate, also spoke.

Dennis Bradley, Veteran’s Party candidate for Senate, called for the immediate deportation of all “illegal immigrants.”

The audience reacted to the rightist program of the Veterans Party with questions, including, “What is your stand on affirmative action for Blacks and for women?” and “Where do you stand on the right to vote for convicted felons?” Kaisha Alexander, a young woman from the Clay County chapter of the NAACP, stood up and said that Bradley’s position on closing the borders sounded like bringing on an Orwellian police state.

While in Tampa, Hawkins was interviewed by La Gaceta newspaper, and the Pacifica radio station WMNF. She also spent an afternoon discussing politics with students at the University of South Florida, some of whom came to a reception at the campaign hall later that evening. The October 1 edition of the USF paper, The Oracle, featured a photograph of Hawkins on the front page with the caption, “Working for the people. Socialist Workers Party vice-presidential candidate Arrin Hawkins opened her campaign headquarters in Tampa on Thursday to those who wanted to hear her views and goals.”
 
 
Related articles:
‘We stand with workers trying to organize unions’
We support right of oppressed nations to economic development, says socialist in Iowa
Campaigning for SWP slate nets ‘Militant’ subs
Penn. socialists step up campaigning in wake of arson attack
Calero speaks to coal miners, others in Utah
Support SWP ticket in 2004  
 
 
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