BY NAOMI CRAINE
NEW YORK - The Socialist Workers Party National Committee announced March 25 its choices for the 1996 presidential elections. James Harris, a 48-year-old meatpacker from Atlanta, is the Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. president. Laura Garza, 37, until recently a member of the United Steelworkers of America in Miami and now a staff writer for the Militant newspaper residing in New York, is the vice presidential nominee.
"They are the working-class alternative to the parties of war, racism, and economic depression - the Democrats and Republicans - and other `third' parties that accept capitalism," said national campaign director Greg McCartan. McCartan was the director of the Socialist Workers 1992 presidential election campaign.
The Young Socialists National Committee has invited Harris and Garza to attend their convention in Minneapolis April 6-7, and to solicit the endorsement of the revolutionary youth organization and the support of the international young socialists. A campaign rally will be held on Saturday evening, April 6.
"The Young Socialists national gathering will be the first stop of the election campaign," McCartan said. "We hope young people from all around the country who are looking for an alternative to the injustices of the capitalist system will come to Minneapolis. We look forward to shouldering responsibility together in the fight for a better world and campaigning with all those who stand up against imperialism and war."
McCartan explained that statewide slates of socialist candidates will be announced over the coming weeks by SWP state committees around the country. Like Harris and Garza, the SWP standard-bearers in these efforts will be communist workers who are part of the fighting rank-and-file in the labor movement. They are known on the job for their activity in defense of Cuba, the fight for women's rights and against racism, for immigrant rights, and for getting revolutionary books and other literature distributed by Pathfinder Press into the hands of workers and youth.
"Socialist candidates and their supporters will build a working-class campaign," McCartan said, "that joins the continuing resistance of working people today like strikers in the recent fight by the United Auto Workers at General Motors. It's a campaign that organizes to protest Patrick Buchanan and the rightist movement his presidential campaign reinforces, that joins actions such as those organized by Chicano and Mexican workers and youth against anti-immigrant and racist policies and for affirmative action in a number of states; and that tells the truth about Washington's war preparations, be they against Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, or elsewhere."
Activity as part of labor movement
Presidential candidate Harris is a member of the SWP
National Committee. He has a more than 30-year record of
activity as a young socialist, as part of the labor movement,
the fight for Black rights, and in defense of the socialist
revolution in Cuba. He is a member of the United Food and
Commercial Workers union at the Geo. A. Hormel & Co.
meatpacking plant where he works in Atlanta. The presidential
candidate has filed for a leave of absence from his job to be
able to campaign around the country through November.
Laura Garza is a long-time unionist. She has worked in garment and other industries. While still in high school, Garza became an organized young socialist and part of the fight of Chicano, Mexicano, and Filipino workers to organize the United Farm Workers union in California, and has been involved in organizing against Washington's wars, from Vietnam to Nicaragua to Iraq. She is also a member of the party's National Committee.
This past week the major capitalist parties narrowed down who the alternatives will be to represent the ruling rich in the November elections. U.S. Sen. Robert Dole locked up the nomination of the Republican Party and President William Clinton, who has run unopposed, will be the Democratic Party nominee.
But dissatisfaction among millions as a result of the effects of the capitalist crisis continues to fuel the more and more evident strains in the two-party system. Ross Perot is marching ahead with campaigns for ballot status in all 50 states. As Buchanan heads for the Republican Party convention to press his rightist agenda there, he also holds out the possibility to his supporters of running a third-party campaign, that could help consolidate cadre for an incipient fascist coalition. And recently Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who is on the ballot in California, is gaining attention in the big-business media.
The officialdom of the trade union movement continues its slavish adherence to the parties of the bosses, with its endorsement of the Democratic front-runner, McCartan noted. The AFL-CIO tops gave their nearly unanimous backing to Clinton on March 25, and set a special dues assessment to raise at least $25 million to aid the Democratic Party candidates. This will be paid for either directly or indirectly out of the ever-diminishing wages of rank-and-file workers and used to help insure the election of candidates who undermine the interests of working people.
"Our campaign presents a working-class voice in the campaign," McCartan said, "and advocates that working people chart a political course - independent of the two parties - that relies on our collective power, our unions, and our actions in the streets to advance our interests as a class."
The Socialist Workers nominations were made this week by the party's National Committee, following meetings of communist workers who are leaders of the party's trade union work, and a subsequent party leadership conference February 24-26. The political framework of the campaign was decided at that meeting, which was attended by members of the party National Committee and by delegates chosen by each branch of the SWP.
The meeting proved to be a launching-pad for responding to Washington's latest round of threats against Cuba, this time following the shooting down by the Cuban air force of two aircraft flown by "Brothers to the Rescue" pilots into Cuban airspace. Later in April, James Harris will be joining a delegation of trade unionists from the United States to attend the 17th Congress of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC), which will culminate in a May Day march in Havana. The CTC is the Cuban workers' trade union federation. In preparation for the congress a comprehensive theses is being discussed by workers in Cuba (see pages 8-9).
The CTC leadership issued a call for trade unionists and other workers from throughout the world to attend their congress. SWP national trade union director Joel Britton, who will head the delegation of party members, is also among those who are encouraging rank-and-file unionists to attend the Cuban workers' congress. In addition to the CTC gathering, the group will visit factories and meet with Cuban workers and union leaders.
Reading the theses, encouraging rank-and-file workers to attend the congress, and setting up discussions with unionists in the United States following the trip is a central task of socialists in the unions, the campaign director said. Carrying out consistent communist work in the labor movement today includes explaining that Cuban workers are the ruling class in Cuba, why they continue to defend socialism arms in hand, and why such a revolution is needed in the United States.
Responding to war pressures
The central theme of the February party leadership meeting
was how a proletarian party responds to war pressures through
turning more deeply to the working class and its
organizations. In the weeks and months leading up to the
meeting Washington organized a massive military mobilization
of troops, ships, and aircraft as the lead force of 60,000
soldiers in NATO's war drive against Yugoslavia. Sharpening
war threats were also being sounded against China over the
Taiwan Strait, as Washington sent its largest naval armada to
the region since the Vietnam War.
The working class faces a different situation in the current war preparations than leading into Washington's assault on Iraq in 1991, SWP leaders noted. Since the end of that brutal slaughter of Iraqi workers and peasants in uniform by Washington, a world capitalist economic depression has begun. The workings of capitalism under these conditions have generated high and long-term unemployment, massive layoffs affecting middle-class layers, and downward pressure on workers' wages, even in advanced imperialist countries such as Germany, France, and the United States.
"Under these conditions the effects of war preparations are an impetus to the development of fascist-type elements," explained McCartan.
Politicians like Buchanan peddle a counterfeit socialism, promoting "our national interests" against workers in other countries. For instance, Buchanan's stance in relation to the Boeing strike was to attack the company for plans to outsource work to China. He took a similar position when GM workers went out on strike in Dayton, Ohio, scoring the auto maker for sending work to Mexico.
The Socialist Workers campaign raises communist answers to the crisis: building a fighting movement of working people based on proletarian internationalism, projecting confidence in the collective power and ability of workers to break down divisions maintained and reinforced by capitalist society, and its ability to march along a route to political power.
"Our campaign will identify with the struggles of the oppressed and exploited against the increasingly brutal assault by the wealthy minority the world over," McCartan explained. "It wholeheartedly and unconditionally supports the right of Cuba to defend its sovereignty and socialism. It backs the actions of the oppressed in this country, and stands shoulder to shoulder with all those who are fighting to lift up their conditions of life and labor."
"We place the international struggle for `Jobs for all!' at the center of the demands of our campaign and what the labor movement should champion," McCartan said. "We fight for measures to combat the effects of unemployment and sudden inflationary surges that devastate workers' wages."
This fight for employment for all includes demands for shortening the workweek, with no cut in pay, to spread available work around, and a massive public works program to put millions to work building much needed housing, schools, and public infrastructure such a roads and mass transportation. Socialists also demand cost-of-living escalators that would correspond to increases in inflation.
In all countries of the world, women, members of oppressed nationalities, and youth are among those hardest hit by the capitalist economic crisis. In order to keep the workings of the capitalist economy and social relations from deepening divisions with the working class, the socialist campaign demands government and business extend affirmative action programs in employment, housing, and education.
Fighting for equal rights for immigrants and against deportations is part of this same fight to unite working people against the divide and rule tactics of the government and the employers, McCartan said.
One aspect of the affirmative action fight is to raise the minimum wage to union scale. After promising limited action on this four years ago during his campaign for president, the minimum remains at $4.25 under Clinton's administration.
A paltry increase - stretched out over 15 months - to $5.15 an hour was proposed by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts this week. Kennedy immediately proposed to Republican Dole that the vote be put off at least until June.
Holding down the minimum wage for four years is a piece of the broader assault on the social wage carried out by the Democrats and Republicans alike. It is a piece with the attacks on social security, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, and programs that guarantee those thrown out of work for various reasons are entitled to some measure of protection from economic ruin.
This is a bipartisan assault, pressed forward by both the Democratic and Republican parties. Clinton has continued to advance steps to make good on his pledge to "end welfare as we know it," promising fake, make-work jobs.
McCartan explained that the socialist candidates will take on the whole framework of how those who rule this country present world politics. The bourgeois politicians attempt to blame working people - those who create all of the wealth - for the problems and breakdowns in society today.
Part and parcel of this assault is what Buchanan has dubbed the cultural war - the propaganda offensive against abortion rights, to bring back prayer in the schools, to introduce "order and discipline," and promoting family values as the answer to the uncertainties and breakdowns in society.
Also a feature of the socialist platform is cancellation of the onerous debt Third World countries owe to imperialist banks and financial institutions. To keep these debt payments flowing in, the bankers demand that governments in the oppressed countries cut wages and increase speed-up, slash even minimal social expenditures, and implement other brutal austerity measures aimed at squeezing more out of working people.
"The socialist campaign rejects the nationalist framework of all the Democratic, Republican, Reform, and Green party candidates that pits workers in this country against their allies abroad," McCartan said. "These demands must be fought for as part of an international movement of working people, who have a common interest against a common enemy.
"The campaign will raise the need to forge a revolutionary movement of working people that can replace the government of the wealthy minority in Washington with one of workers and farmers, open up the fight to overturn capitalism, and join the worldwide struggle for socialism.
"This course," McCartan said, "is what can defeat the plans the billionaire ruling families have in store for humanity: forcing more of the burden of the capitalist economic crisis onto the backs of working people and the oppressed; meeting resistance by workers and the oppressed to this assault through increasingly harsh methods, including the imposition of fascism when needed; and pressing toward wars in an attempt to reestablish stable foundations for their economic and social order."
`Join in campaigning!'
Following the Young Socialists convention, Harris will join
the delegation to the CTC congress. The candidates will
participate in conferences and protests such as the April 14
march to defend affirmative action and women's rights in San
Francisco, California. The "March to Fight the Right," called
by the National Organization for Women, will draw thousands
who want to stand up and fight the bipartisan offensive under
way today. Garza will continue for several weeks to write as
part of the Militant staff on issues of concern to working
people.
Campaign supporters in each state will discuss plans for getting the socialist ticket on the ballot, or organizing a write-in campaign where undemocratic laws prevent working- class parties from obtaining ballot status any other way.
McCartan said funds are needed for the national campaign. Supporters are encouraged to make initial contributions to help get the national campaign under way. Seed money is needed for preparatory work, travel arrangements, and press work. Checks can be made out to the Socialist Workers 1996 National Campaign Committee. Funds, inquires, or offers of support should be sent to P.O. Box 2652, New York, N.Y. 10009.
"We urge all those who want to fight the increasingly reactionary course - the march toward fascism and war - of the wealthy families in whose interests this country is run, to join in campaigning with the socialist candidates," the campaign director told the Militant. "We will wage this campaign as part of the working class movement, reach out to struggles, and utilize the campaign as a platform for fighters everywhere possible.
"The socialist workers campaign is an integral part of the fight to unite working people in a revolutionary struggle for a government of workers and farmers, a government that will represent the vast majority."