BY SAM MANUEL
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Supporters of Mary Martin, Socialist Workers candidate for chair of the city council in the District of Columbia are pushing to complete a petitioning campaign by May 14 to get on the ballot. Martin is an airline worker and a member of International Association of Machinists Local 1759. She has been involved in the fight for women's rights, in mobilizations against imperialist wars and in working-class politics for more than 25 years. The socialist candidate will need 3,000 signatures on petitions to obtain ballot status for the July 22 special election.

The city council was mandated to call the election following the death of council chairman Dave Clarke. Martin will be opposed by Democratic councilwoman Linda Cropp, and Republican candidate Benjamin Metz.

Entering the last week of the effort, supporters have gathered more than 1,700 signatures at campuses, shopping areas, street corners, on the job, and at political meetings. Petitioners have sold more than 47 books published by Pathfinder Press, a major publisher of the writings and speeches by Fidel Castro, Ernesto (Che) Guevara, Malcolm X, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and other revolutionary working- class leaders.

The socialist campaign was well received at a protest of 200 Black farmers and their supporters against racist discrimination they face from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The socialist candidate also attended some of the rounds of hearings on a proposal to close 11 of the 16 schools in the city. The proposal is expected to be approved by a "trustee school board." Elected school board members were replaced with the trustees just weeks after their election last November. The trustee board was appointed by the Financial Control Board, which was itself appointed by the U.S. president in 1995.

Angry protests have been organized across the city against the cutbacks. Several parents and students noted in the hearings that some of the schools proposed to be closed are among the better performing schools in the system. The buildings from several schools to be closed are slated for leasing to "generate revenue." Some 5,800 students will be affected by the closings.

"My campaign is opposed to closing a single school in the district," Martin explained. "These protests are an important part of the fight to defend public education."

Martin and her supporters also joined protests by students at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) against proposals to slash its funding. Some 200 students there have signed to get the socialist candidate on the ballot. UDC, the only public university in this city, is mostly attended by Black, Latino, Asian, and working-class students. The university is a product of the massive protests for equal and expanded education during the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

The socialist candidate is also campaigning against renewed attempts to impose the death penalty in the city. On April 21 Mayor Marion Barry asked the city council to adopt legislation imposing the death penalty for those convicted of killing a cop. A referendum ordered by Congress to impose broader death penalty provisions was overwhelmingly defeated in 1992.

"The death penalty is nothing more than a weapon of terror wielded by the capitalist rulers against working people," explained the socialist candidate.

The socialist candidate also calls for cutting the workweek to 30 hours' work for 40 hours' pay to create more jobs at union wages; defending and expanding social security; support for sriking workers; no imperialist intervention in Albania or Zaire; ending Israeli occupation of Palestinian land; and support for the Cuban revolution and end to the embargo and travel ban against Cuba.

Sam Manuel is a member of the United Transportation Union.  
 
 
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