In Washington State, Scott Breen, candidate for Seattle mayor, and other socialist candidates are mounting a political campaign to protect freedom of speech and association, through their efforts to overturn a Seattle Ethics and Election Commission ruling demanding that the names of contributors to the campaign be made public.

SWP candidate for mayor of Minneapolis, Jennifer Benton, and her supporters have opened a free-speech fight against the city for citations given to campaign supporter Doug Jenness for distributing campaign material and posting it on a street light post.

The Militant has also reported on several recent cases of company and FBI harassment of socialist candidates and their supporters, such as The Boeing Company's attempt to intimidate Breen, a member of the International Association of Machinists and a production worker at the company, from publicly explaining his political positions as part of his campaign.

As working people stiffen their resistance to the employers' offensive, the ruling rich and their representatives strike back and attempt to deal some blows of their own. The attacks on the Socialist Workers campaigns are part of this political polarization. They are part of the battle between the labor movement and the capitalist class. These probes are aimed not just at the candidates' campaign activity outside work, but are an attempt to narrow what the socialists can do on the job, in their union, and among co- workers.

But recent events also show that the working class can fight back. In all these cases, the socialist candidates are winning the backing of fellow unionists and youth, defenders of democratic rights, and activists in important struggles. Some are joining the effort because they want to see a working-class alternative to the two parties of the ruling rich on the ballot. Others see the various probes against the socialists as an opening shot against the broader rights of all.

In Atlanta, an attempt to keep Doug Nelson, the socialist candidate for mayor, off the ballot failed. Earlier, the socialist candidates in New York City pushed back an attempt orchestrated by layers in the Democratic Party to drive them off the ballot. In Iowa, supporters of Thomas Alter organized an effective response to an editorial in the Des Moines Register that scoffed at Alter's mayoral campaign and called for making access to the ballot more difficult.

We urge our readers to join in the battles to defend ballot rights.

Socialists call for an open ballot and the widest possible discussion and debate in the elections on the issues facing working people today. At the same time they organize where possible to meet undemocratic and onerous ballot requirements, such as collecting large numbers of signatures, turning it into an opportunity to reach thousands of people with a working-class program to fight against the economic crises, wars, and racism bred by capitalism.

The goal of ballot restrictions is to prevent all but the major capitalist parties from running official campaigns. Bourgeois politics in the United States is built around the two-party system, and the alternatives are supposed to be within what is offered between the Democrats and Republicans. Parties that advance a perspective for working people become a special target of the ruling rich and their parties when they challenge this framework.

The socialist campaigns provide an example for the entire labor movement of independent working-class political action: the need to break from support to the parties of the bosses, Democrats and Republicans, and to chart a course to build a movement of working people that can challenge the twin parties in the political arena as part of the fight to replace the capitalist government with one of workers and farmers.  
 
 
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