“During those 12 days we will take part in a full street-campaigning effort,” Hawkins said. “Every day we will be joining the issues in debates and discussions and presenting an independent working-class revolutionary perspective that no one else has—with newspapers and books, public programs, classes, and other activities that give clear answers to the big questions in world politics and point a road forward for working people.”

Socialist Workers Party campaigners here were celebrating the success in collecting 3,650 signatures to put the socialist presidential ticket on the ballot in this state. This is well above the required number of 2,000. The Socialist Workers campaign is filing to put its candidates—Róger Calero for president and his running mate Arrin Hawkins—on the ballot in 15 states and the District of Columbia.

Many people who signed the petitions did so because of its working-class platform, said Alex Alvarado, one of the campaigners. “It struck a chord with their experience.” For example, he noted, in Wisconsin as in other Midwestern states they met meat packers and other workers who have been through union battles.

“We need strong unions,” a member of the Brewery Workers Union told Ved Dookhun after he pointed to one of the central demands of the socialist platform: for workers’ right to organize unions and to defend themselves from the bosses’ offensive. She urged the campaigners to visit her union’s informational picket lines at the Miller Brewing Co. plant, where members of the Brewery Workers were engaged in a contract fight.

Responding enthusiastically to the campaign’s demand for creating jobs through massive public works projects, a man in his early 20s told campaigner Jenny Johnson-Blanchard, as he added his signature to the petition, about his ongoing struggle to find work. A temp agency had sent him to the Miller brewery, where he discovered the union pickets and refused to cross the line. “Unions are really important right now,” he said.

At the Third Ward Jazz Festival, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student working at a food booth timed her lunch with the team’s break in order to discuss with them what it will take to unify working people in the fight against the employer class and its two parties. “I need to hear this,” she said. “My boss keeps trying to wear me down. I thought I was the only one who had these ideas.”

A young man of Vietnamese background translated socialist campaigner Bill Schmitt’s words into Vietnamese for his five friends. “You say your party is for the workers?” one of them asked, skeptical at first. When Schmitt said yes, they responded favorably to the Socialist Workers internationalist perspective to unite working people worldwide around our common interests.

Campaigning at a busy street corner in Milwaukee’s Black community, many signed the socialist ballot petition right away, reported Ernie Mailhot. Others who were approached said, “This is not the time—this year the election is too important,” and declined to sign, Mailhot said. Some referred negatively to Ralph Nader supporters petitioning at the Summerfest and State Fairgrounds because they said Nader’s “independent” campaign might split the vote of those who would vote for Democratic candidate John Kerry to defeat George Bush.

To this, Hawkins explained at the rally, “Many say they respect what we say but that in November they don’t want to ‘waste’ their vote. We say: ‘Come November, don’t waste your vote on Kerry. Vote for what you want, what you need—vote Socialist Workers.’”

A woman at the rally who had just met the socialists said she liked the clarity of the slogan of the Socialist Workers campaign: “It’s not who you’re against, but what you’re for.”

“That really caught my eye from the first minute I saw it,” she said. She said she intends to use that argument in the political discussions she has with friends and family.
 
 
Related articles:
Support the Socialist Workers campaign in 2004!
Róger Calero for President, Arrin Hawkins for Vice President
lt’s not who you’re against, but what you are for! Vote Socialist Workers in 2004!
Join us in campaigning for socialism. Support the only working-class alternative in November  
 
 
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