Militant/Arrin Hawkins

Campaigners met with a good response while petitioning in Manhattan's Garment District to place Socialist Workers Party candidates on the ballot in New York City.

“We’ve met working people, students, and others who told us they’re glad to find a campaign that speaks to the interests of workers and farmers, with a platform that starts with the world,” said Martín Koppel, the Socialist Workers candidate for New York mayor.

Campaigners have been taking the socialist platform across the city, from the mid-Manhattan Garment District to working-class neighborhoods in Jamaica, Queens.

In addition to Koppel, the SWP slate includes Dan Fein for city comptroller, Arrin Hawkins for Manhattan borough president, and Sarah Katz for Bronx borough president.

The campaigners plan to collect 20,000 signatures by July 23—well more than double the 7,500 required—to put the socialist slate on the strongest footing to win ballot status.

A full-time team of petitioners has been fanning out daily across the city. On the weekends of July 16 and July 23, dozens of additional volunteers will join campaign teams.

Speaking to a Militant reporter after a full day of campaigning, team member Julian Santana, 24, said, “The response to our campaign in Harlem was very good. A number of people signed right away after seeing our sign calling for prosecution of the racist thugs who attacked three Black youth in Howard Beach.” Besides collecting nearly 260 signatures, the three-person team met six people who bought the Militant, and several others picked up books on working-class politics.

At the center of the Socialist Workers campaign is support to workers’ struggles to organize unions and to use and extend union power to defend working people from the capitalist rulers’ assaults.

On July 10 a team including Dan Fein visited the picket line of airplane fuelers at Kennedy airport to back their fight. Some 300 members of Teamsters Local 553 are on strike against Allied Aviation, which is demanding big hikes in health insurance costs while offering miserly in wage and pension increases.

Strikers have had to deal with Port Authority cops, who, seizing on the July 7 London bombings, forced them in the name of “security” to move their pickets from their original site to a less visible location.

“Washington aids the bosses with its ‘antiterrorist’ campaign, trying to get workers to subordinate their fights to patriotic appeals,” Fein said. “The fact unionists are standing together against the company’s demands sets a good example to other workers.”

Three classes, each at 7:00 p.m., are being organized at the campaign headquarters (see directory on page 8). One will be held Friday, July 15, on “1938-45: The Political Foundations of the Socialist Workers Party,” given by Dave Prince. On Wednesday, July 20, Debbie Lazar will present a class based on the pamphlet The Revolutionary Party by James P. Cannon. On Friday, July 22, Ma’mud Shirvani will give a class on “Historical Trends that Strengthen Working-Class Solidarity and the Declining Hold of Religious Obscurantism.”
 
 
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Socialists campaign among working people resisting bosses’ attacks  
 
 
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