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Vol. 72/No. 18      May 5, 2008

 
SWP candidate for vice president
speaks to 300 at Rutgers University
 
BY NANCY ROSENSTOCK
AND SARA LOBMAN
 
NEWARK, New Jersey—“I like what you have to say but the Democrats and Republicans have the money. Besides, don’t we really need to start at a local level to make a difference?” a student asked Alyson Kennedy, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. vice president.

Kennedy was addressing a sociology class of some 300 students at the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick on April 15. She had been invited by Professor Robyn Rodriguez, who had been part of organizing a program the previous week on the book Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution. The book is published by Pathfinder.

While it’s true the capitalist parties have money, the working class has something more powerful, Kennedy told the students. “Working people can change the world,” she explained. “Look at how we fought to establish industrial unions in the 1930s and to end Jim Crow segregation in the 1950s and ’60s. But we need our own party, a labor party based on a fighting union movement, that can take on the bosses and their two-party system.”

Kennedy also spoke at a program organized by Radigals, a feminist organization on campus.

Several days earlier, Kennedy joined some 90 truck drivers at a meeting to celebrate their successful one-day strike against the high price of fuel on April 1. The drivers announced plans for another strike on April 30 and May 1.

Kennedy was invited to speak at the end of the meeting. She reported on the convoy of truckers in Georgia that she had joined on April 1. Kennedy also related her experiences as one of the leaders of a 10-month strike of coal miners in Utah.
 
 
Related articles:
No work or school on May Day! Legalization for all immigrants!
Socialist candidate Calero salutes Seattle workers for standing up to bosses  
 
 
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