The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 70/No. 11           March 20, 2006  
 
 
Socialist Workers Party ticket
on Newark, New Jersey, ballot
(front page)
 
BY ANGEL LARISCY  
NEWARK, New Jersey—“Thousands in Newark have responded enthusiastically to our call to support workers’ struggles to organize and mobilize union power to defend working people from attacks by the bosses on wages, benefits, safety, and dignity on the job, and for a labor party based on the unions that fights in the interests of workers and farmers year round,” Nancy Rosenstock, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Newark, said in an interview.

Rosenstock, and Chauncey Robinson, who is running on the SWP ticket for City Council in Newark’s West Ward, have been certified to appear on the ballot for the May 9 election.

Socialist Workers campaign supporters collected 2,718 signatures on nominating petitions for Rosenstock and 588 for Robinson—well more than double the required 1,159 for mayor and 232 for city council. Rosenstock was the second mayoral candidate to gain ballot status, after Cory Booker, among the 11 who have declared they are running.

Incumbent Sharpe James and Booker, a former city councilman, both Democrats, are ahead in the polls, though James has yet to announce whether he is running.

Rosenstock, 56, works at a meatpacking plant and is a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers. Robinson, 20, is a retail worker and member of the Young Socialists.

“Working people in Newark are looking for ways to resist the grinding effects of the capitalist economic crisis,” said Robinson. Newark is one of the poorest cities in the country, with 28 percent of the population living below the official poverty line, she pointed out. “We present demands to advance the interests of working people,” she said. “As part of that, the SWP calls for withdrawing now all U.S. and other ‘coalition’ troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“I got a strong response to our call to socialize health care to provide universal, federally guaranteed, lifetime medical coverage for everyone in this country, and no cuts in present or future Social Security benefits,” said Rosenstock.

The socialist candidates are now stepping up their outreach efforts. On February 23, Rosenstock spoke at a vigil for immigrant rights in Newark. “The internationalization of the working class through immigration strengthens our class in this country,” Rosenstock said. The Socialist Workers campaign opposes restrictions on the right of immigrants to live and work here, she said. The SWP campaign opposes the McCain-Kennedy “Secure America and Orderly Immigration” bill, or a similar “temporary worker” proposal pushed by the Bush administration. These “guest worker” bills are designed to reinforce divisions in the working class and maintain a permanent category of workers stripped of rights in order to guarantee a reservoir of superexploited labor for the bosses, Rosenstock pointed out.  
 
 
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