Twenty five supporters of the SWP mayoral campaign here hit the streets November 27-30 to collect signatures to put Lyons on the ballot. On December 2, campaign supporters filed 915 signatures at the city clerk’s election division offices in downtown Los Angeles.

Two days later, the city clerk claimed that only 459 of those signatures were valid. SWP campaigners collected additional signatures and filed a supplemental petition to meet the requirement of 500 valid signatures.

Lyons joined the socialist movement in the 1960s, and has actively participated in the civil rights movement, the fight against the war in Vietnam, and the movement that won decriminalization of abortion. Lyons has campaigned against Washington’s war in Iraq and is a defender of the Cuban Revolution.

While petitioning, Lyons found interest in the fact that the socialist campaign champions the need of workers to organize unions and strengthen those that already exist. Key to moving forward, Lyons told the Militant, “is strengthening the unions, especially by unifying ourselves at the workplace, on the shop floor, against the profit drive of the bosses, and organize them where they don’t already exist. We need to fight the bosses’ attacks, their speed-up, the worsening conditions both on and off the job that all workers face.”

Lyons also said that workers must act on the political plane, not just on the economic front. Workers need to build a labor party, based on the unions, that fights in the interests of workers and farmers 365 days a year and is independent of the capitalist class and its parties—whether Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Green, she said.

At the shift change at the Farmer John meatpacking plant on November 30, about 30 meat packers signed the nominating petition to put Lyons on the ballot. Norma and Norberto Martínez, two SWP campaign supporters, joined Lyons outside the plant to collect signatures and pass out leaflets about the campaign. Their 26-year-old son, Gonzalo Martínez, was shot 34 times by Downey police officers on Feb. 15, 2002. The family has organized several protests since then to demand justice for the killing of their son.

Two of Lyons’ co-workers also helped circulate the petition, one joining a team in a working-class neighborhood and the other signing up friends and relatives.

Campaign supporters received a good response in the Black community, where the majority of signatures were gathered. One of the signers was a Black GI, who said he agreed with the call of the SWP campaign to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. He also signed up for an introductory subscription to the Militant.

At one of the shopping centers in a working-class district near the campaign headquarters, workers from Save-on, a drugstore chain, signed the petition. They reported that the UFCW has taken steps to begin organizing their workplace. Socialist campaigners got a similar response from grocery workers who had been on strike earlier in the year at Albertsons, a large supermarket chain. The long strike was settled last spring, and the approved contract contained deep union-weakening concessions.

Many students at Los Angeles Trade Tech, a college in downtown Los Angeles, eagerly signed up. Most of the students also work part-time and full-time jobs while going to school. One student invited Lyons to come and speak before her class. Two others bought copies of the Pathfinder pamphlet The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning; The Fraud of Education Reform under Capitalism.

“I will be talking to people and encourage them to support the campaign,” said Luz Cepeda, after hearing Lyons speak at a recent Militant Labor Forum here. Cepeda, a UFCW shop steward, also works on the kill floor at Farmer John.

Along with campaign supporters, Lyons protested her exclusion from a mayoral debate on December 2, which took place at the Museum of Tolerance. Only five of the candidates—all from the Democratic Party—were allowed in the debate.  
 
 
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