Workers in the United States have nothing in common with torturers, Sandler stated, “but Washington’s brutality in Iraq shows the true face of U.S. imperialism around the world.”

The delegates to this one-day meeting decided on candidates for the upcoming elections and voted on the outlines of a state election platform. Twenty-three SWP campaign backers attended.

The state convention nominated Nicole Sarmiento, 22, a student at the University of Miami as the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in Florida; Karl Butts, a vegetable farmer in Plant City for Congress in the 11th C.D. in Tampa; and Omari Musa and Seth Galinsky for U.S. Congress in the 17th and 21st Districts, respectively, in the Miami area. Musa and Galinsky are garment workers.

The convention also nominated Lawrence Mikesh, a meat packer, as the party’s candidate for mayor of Miami-Dade Country.

Sandler noted that Washington is carrying out its assault on working people at home and abroad under the banner of the “war on terrorism,” as they seek to redivide the resources and the wealth working people create around the world through our labor in favor of the handful of billionaire families who rule the United States, while dealing blows to their imperialist rivals in Paris, Berlin, London, and Tokyo. This assault is being led by the politicians from the Democratic and Republican parties alike, Sandler said, and will continue regardless of which of these parties is in office after the November election.

“We will campaign vigorously against their war party,” Sandler said, referring to both the Democrats and Republicans. “Our campaign will say, ‘not one penny, not one man or woman for the imperialist war machine.’ We will urge others to join us in campaigning for the immediate and unconditional removal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Colombia, the Korean Peninsula, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.”

In his report, Sandler said workers in the United States are working longer and longer days while millions are unemployed. In Florida alone, nearly 400,000 are out of work according to the government’s own figures, while tens of thousands of immigrants, and those who have stopped looking for jobs or exhausted their benefits, are not counted in the “official” statistics.

“The bosses are combining jobs, speeding up the assembly line, putting the life and limbs of workers in the mines, factories, and mills increasingly in danger,” said Sandler. “The rulers’ attacks on rights, including secret detentions and trials, especially targeting the foreign born, and stepped-up government spying and disruption attempts are their necessary counterpart to the war the employers are carrying out against working people in this country.”

Sandler said the SWP slate of candidates in Florida will call for shortening the workweek to 30 hours while guaranteeing 40 hours pay to spread the available work around. “We also call for a federal government-financed massive public workers program to build desperately needed housing, schools, hospitals, and day-care centers, and to repair the decaying roads and bridges across the United States and Florida. These measures will put millions back to work,” he said.

At the same time, prices are climbing higher for gasoline, milk, and other commodities. “SWP candidates are going to demand that the energy industry be nationalized and placed under workers control. Committees of workers and farmers can inspect the books of these energy trusts, exposing their secret deals, their war plans, their contrived shortages, and price rigging,” said Sandler.

“By running the oil and chemical plants ourselves, we will gain valuable experience that is part of preparing the working-class for running all of society,” he said.

Sandler noted that Florida is a vast agricultural state with 44,000 farms. Some 60 percent of these farms have less than 50 acres. Small farmers across the state have difficulty making ends meet and many are being forced off the land. The Socialist Workers Party election campaign will demand an end to farm foreclosures and access to cheap credit for small farmers. We will stand side by side with farmers who are Black who are fighting to keep their land,” said Sandler.

During the discussion, Cheryl Goertz from Tampa presented figures that show the impact of the deepening economic and social crisis in Florida on workers who are Black and Latino, and the changing face of the working class in this state.

In Florida, 23 percent of the population speaks a language other than English at home; in Miami-Dade County it’s 68 percent. The per capita income in the United States is roughly $33,170, and in Florida it’s $30,730. For Black Floridians, however, per capita income is only $18,750 and for Latinos even less, $18,000. While the official “poverty rate” for whites is 10 percent, in Florida for Blacks it’s 30 percent and 24 percent for Latinos

Recent figures indicate that 1.3 million employed workers in Florida have no access to health-care coverage, including 700,000 people in Miami-Dade and Broward counties alone.

Several delegates noted that the SWP campaign calls for the establishment of federal government-guaranteed social security and health-care coverage for all.

The report and the discussion pointed to the example of workers in Florida and elsewhere fighting back against the rulers’ attacks. Sandler highlighted the successful fight at the Point Blank Body Armor plant in Oakland Park, where workers won union recognition and a contract. He also pointed to coal miners in Huntington, Utah, fighting to win union recognition there.

“We will campaign from inside the resistance,” said Seth Galinsky from Miami. “We were part of the April 25 March on Washington to defend a woman’s right to choose.” Galinsky said at the Point Blank plant where he is employed that workers born in Haiti and various Latin American countries including Cuba came together to win this fight. “They are part of making the U.S. working class stronger,” said Galinsky.

Omari Musa, also from Miami, said that one aspect of the 2000 election in Florida was the attempt to disenfranchise Black voters. We should resist all attempts to deny workers who are Black the right to vote, and we should also oppose denying the right to vote to people who have served time for felony convictions.

Karl Butts from Tampa noted how the rise in fuel prices is affecting independent truckers and what farmers are paying for off-road diesel fuel for their tractors and other farm implements and petroleum-based farm in-puts. He said the SWP’s campaign plank calling for nationalization of the energy industry under workers control will win support among farmers.

Lawrence Mikesh from Miami noted that there is a strong possibility that Ralph Nader will be on the Florida ballot for the fall presidential election in addition to George Bush and John Kerry. Mikesh said that while the Democrats and Republicans are the SWP’s main opponents, the party will also campaign against Nader. “Nader was quoted as saying he is pushing the Democrats to be more progressive,” Mikesh said. “But we’re pushing for working people to fight to take power out of the hands of the war makers, including the Democrats.”

Martín Koppel, who attended the meeting for the Socialist Workers National Campaign Committee explained, “We won’t say ‘open the borders’ as a general slogan. We have to start by addressing the concrete situation. We raise demands to stop the deportations, stop the factory raids, end restrictions on drivers licenses, and end ‘no match’ letters.”

In deciding on the SWP slate, the delegates noted that Nicole Sarmiento’s opponents in the race to replace Democrat Robert Graham as U.S. Senator include Republicans William McCollum, a former U.S. Congressman; Mel Martinez, who served three years in the current administration in Washington as George Bush’s secretary of housing and urban development; and John Byrd, the current speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. Sarmiento’s Democratic Party opponents include Alex Penelas, the current mayor of Miami-Dade County; Peter Deutsch, a U.S. Congressmen from Ft. Lauderdale; and Betty Castor from Tampa, a former Florida commissioner of education.

The congressional district in which Omari Musa is running encompasses northern Miami and southern Broward County, where Democrat Kendrick Meek is the incumbent. Seth Galinsky, a garment worker at Point Blank Body Armor, will be running against Republican Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a leading right-wing opponent of the Cuban Revolution in Florida and the U.S. Congress.

Sarmiento, Butts, Musa, and Galinsky will be write-in candidates. Later this summer, the SWP campaign will also file the names of 27 electors, the amount necessary to qualify the party’s presidential slate for the November election.

“We will campaign together, in action, with young people and others who want to go with us to the factory gates, on campus, street corners, door to door,” Sandler said in his concluding remarks. “We will raise our platform. We will defend the Cuban Revolution. We will win access to the media to gain a wider hearing for a revolutionary socialist perspective.”  
 
 
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