Calero, organizer of the petitioning drive here, was opening a July 23 rally, attended by more than 90 people, to celebrate the success of that 12-day effort. Campaigners gathered more than double the 7,500 signatures required for ballot status in the city elections.

The speakers included the four candidates on the SWP ticket here: Martín Koppel for mayor, Dan Fein for city comptroller, Arrin Hawkins for Manhattan borough president, and Sarah Katz for Bronx borough president.

Jay Ressler, SWP candidate for mayor of Pittsburgh, spoke about the recent victory the SWP campaign won in that city. Following his refusal to sign an “antisubversive” loyalty oath, the board of elections accepted the SWP campaign’s petitions.

The success in the New York petitioning drive “builds on the victories for political rights won in Pittsburgh and Seattle,” said SWP national campaign director Argiris Malapanis. In Seattle, he noted, the party won an exemption from the city’s requirement to publicly disclose names, addresses, and jobs of campaign contributors.

The rally was a sendoff for campaigners who were about to leave for Los Angeles or Birmingham, Alabama. In Los Angeles the party is launching a drive to place its city council candidate, Diana Newberry, on the ballot. A sales team is being organized out of Birmingham to sell the Militant to auto workers in plants throughout the South.

“The Socialist Workers campaign links up with workers in struggle,” said Fein. “We present first and foremost the need to organize unions and to strengthen those that we have.”

Fein, who works at the Hunts Point Meat Market in the Bronx, pointed to the warm response the socialist campaign has received from fellow workers. “Thirty-six workers at several meatpacking shops here have signed to put our slate on the ballot. At one plant the union rep posted on the bulletin board the English and Spanish brochures with the SWP campaign platform,” he said.

Arrin Hawkins explained that, unlike capitalist candidates, who reduce the political debate to narrow “New York issues,” the socialist campaign “begins with the interests of workers and farmers worldwide.” Workers in the United States, she said, need to oppose the efforts by the imperialist powers to block semicolonial nations such as Iran and north Korea from developing nuclear power and other energy sources needed to expand access to electrical power.

“We are the only working-class party running in the elections,” Koppel said. “Now, with the petitioning effort completed, we can step up campaigning. We’ll take advantage of every opportunity to reach workers and youth, presenting a revolutionary, working-class alternative to the Democrats, Republicans, and other capitalist parties.”

It’s the workings of the capitalist system itself that is preparing a world “of more turmoil, uncertainty, economic ruin, imperialist wars, and degradation,” Koppel said. The march of workers and farmers toward revolutionary openings is inevitable, he added. But to win, “a revolutionary workers party is needed—a disciplined, serious political organization with a program and strategy to lead workers and farmers to take power. That’s what we are setting out to build. If that’s what you are looking for, our party is your party and I invite you to join us,” he concluded.

The next day, Fein and a team of campaigners soapboxed on the streets of Brooklyn. Crystal Renee Luckette, a student at the High School for Legal Studies, stopped by together with two friends to learn more about the SWP campaign. As another of her friends walked by, she shouted, “Hey, come here, this campaign is important.” Luckette plans to set up a meeting for socialist candidates at her high school in the fall.

That evening, Koppel was one of several speakers at a meeting in the Bronx sponsored by Puerto Rican independence fighters to mark the 107th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico. “Working people in the United States have common interests with those fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico. Together we can bring down the world’s final empire and advance the fight for a world of free men and women,” Koppel said.
 
 
Related article:
Los Angeles: Socialist Workers launch campaign for city council  
 
 
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