My name is Joel Britton. I am running for governor of California as the candidate of the Socialist Workers Party and am on the ballot as: “Joel Britton—Independent, Retired Meat Packer.”

I have also been an oil refinery worker. I am a long-time trade unionist, Black rights and antiwar activist, and serve on the National Committee of my party.

With this message I am appealing to California voters abroad, especially to the workingmen and women in uniform now serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, south Korea, and elsewhere. Exercise your constitutional rights as citizen-soldiers to discuss with fellow soldiers and sailors the burning issues facing working people and youth. Please consider casting an absentee ballot for a fighting working-class alternative to the twin parties of imperialist war and occupation, economic exploitation and depression, and racist oppression.

Working people in California and all over the United States have been hit by devastating attacks on our standard of living and rights—high unemployment, cuts in wages and benefits, speedup and rising injuries on the job, union-weakening or -busting moves.

The Socialist Workers campaign opposes all the moves by the ruling rich, and the Democratic and Republican parties who govern on their behalf, to put the burden of the crisis of their economic system on the backs of working people.

My campaign’s “Jobs for All!” program calls for a massive program of government-funded public works and a shorter workweek at union scale to spread around the available work. We call for a big increase in the minimum wage. We call for cost-of-living protection in all union contracts, unemployment payments, and other social benefits. We demand debt relief for working farmers and a stop to the foreclosures on their farms by the banks.

We defend affirmative action. We back women’s access to abortion; it is a woman’s right to choose.

We call for an end to Washington’s economic war on Cuba and support normalizing relations.

We call for immediately and unconditionally bringing the troops home from the Balkans, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan. End the occupations by U.S. forces now!

The same ruling families who are attacking the living standards of working people here are responsible for Washington’s wars, which are to defend U.S. investments and profits made abroad and to beat out capitalist competitors in Europe and Japan for control of oil and other resources. Working people need to fight to nationalize the energy and power companies, taking them out of private hands and running them as public utilities for the benefit of the majority, and under workers control.

We support struggles against police brutality and demand an end to the death penalty. We are opposed to the attempts of the bosses to divide our class between those who are born in the U.S. and our fellow workers born in other countries. We support the right of immigrant workers to a driver’s license and for freedom from harassment by immigration police.

We stand with workers and farmers across Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia who are struggling against social and economic catastrophe and imperialist domination.

We call for canceling the Third World debt that is channeling wealth from countries oppressed by imperialism to the wealthy of the U.S., Europe, and Japan.

Capitalism—a system based on the rule of a tiny minority of wealthy families—has nothing to offer working people and youth, either at home or abroad.

Our socialist campaign welcomes the resistance by those working people who are fighting to organize a trade union or to strengthen the one they have, the better to defend ourselves from the rulers’ attacks. We believe it is possible to build the kind of workers movement in the United States that can follow the example set many years ago in Cuba, where a U.S.-backed dictatorship was overthrown, national sovereignty won, Cuban and foreign big business taken out of private hands and put into the hands of the people. We too can one day be part of a revolutionary struggle for a workers and farmers government.

If you want more information, photos, and articles on the socialist campaign for governor, contact www.themilitant.com

Vote for “Joel Britton—Independent, Retired Meat Packer.” Vote Socialist Workers.
 
 
Related articles:
Socialist Workers candidate for California governor addresses U.S. soldiers abroad
‘I see two Californias: that of the workers, that of the bosses’
California channel interviews Joel Britton
The revolutionary potential of U.S. working class
Socialist Workers gubernatorial candidate discusses record of communist activity
 
 
 
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