BY PHIL HENNESSEY  
Democrats. Republicans. Bloomberg. Ferrer. To mayoral candidate Martin Koppel, of the Socialist Workers Party, it’s all the same.

“Capitalists,” Koppel said, “are only interested in their profits.”

So Koppel is taking to the streets. In just two weeks, he has received more than 20,000 signatures to get his name on the ballot. But Koppel said that his campaign is not just to get votes.

Koppel ran for New York Senate last year, gaining 0.2 percent of the vote and losing to Democrat Charles Schumer. This year, he was not included in the mayoral debates, and neither were several of the other lesser-known mayoral candidates, including Jimmy McMillan of the Rent is Too Damn High party.

Koppel said that his party’s main appeal is the alternative it offers to the two major parties.

“A lot of working people signed up readily when we said our campaign was offering a working-class alternative to the Democrats, the Republicans and other capitalist parties,” Koppel said. “Many people were glad to sign, to have that opportunity, to hear our point of view.”

Koppel said he was focused on the big picture, and was not merely concerned with recruiting votes and winning this election.

“Our campaign is not simply a vote-getting campaign—it’s one of building a movement of working people,” he said. “Our candidates and supporters have gone to where the workers are on strike to defend unions or organize unions.” Unions are at the center of his election campaign, which will come to an end Tuesday. In recent weeks, Koppel has traveled around New York City, met with striking bus drivers in Westchester County and spoken with workers at nearby airport hotels who are fighting to organize a union.

“What has made America what it is today is the labor of workers and farmers who create all the wealth, which is expropriated by a tiny handful for their own benefit at the expense of the needs of the majority,” Koppel said, defending his push to enforce union scale wages on a large scale. “We need unions to defend our living standards.”

Koppel first became politically active as an exchange student in Marseille, France, during his senior year of college at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

“What changed me was that I ended up spending my last year of college in France,” he said “I saw things I had never encountered, like strikes. I could see more openly the class-divided society that existed. I began to wonder: ‘Why is it that most workers in France consider themselves socialists or communists?’”

Koppel found himself slowly changing his mind.

“Before going [to France], I thought socialism was simply an idea,” he said. “But then I discovered that it was associated with a social class. I wasn’t a communist by any means—I was a liberal. I thought there had to be some reasoning, and that led me to look.”

In France, Koppel was exposed to a lot of political refugees from Latin America. He began to feel that the stories he read in magazines did not tell him the whole story.

“I really had no knowledge—I was completely ignorant,” he said. “I spent four years in college and realized I knew very little about the world.” Upon returning to the United States in 1977, Koppel joined the Socialist Workers Party in Baltimore, as he hoped to avoid the “dog-eat-dog” mentality of capitalism.

Koppel cited the U.S. government’s recent reaction to Hurricane Katrina as a prime example of the “real face of capitalism,” under which everyone is left to fend for themselves.

He said the workers and farmers in Louisiana and Mississippi who were left behind helped save lives, took care of others’ homes and found ways to give each other food and shelter. Under those circumstances, they demonstrated the “true spirit of solidarity.”

Koppel said Hurricane Katrina was a “social, man-made disaster,” rather than a natural disaster. He blames the United States’ capitalist structure for the inadequate government response that led to inefficient relief.

“This will happen again and again,” Koppel said.

Koppel also cited the Cuban Revolution to prove workers’ capacity to run society in the interest of the majority.

“In Cuba, you become a doctor to serve people,” Koppel said, emphasizing that Cuba’s priorities begin with the needs of the workers.

He said that the United States is a system that meets the profit needs of the few at the expense of the vast majority.

Koppel foresees a future of economic depression and permanent wars in the United States. He said that only the working class can change this. Koppel believes that today’s working class may be the strongest it has ever been, as it is more international, with greater representation from females and minorities.

“Our campaign is not about what some politician promises they’re going to do for you,” he said. “It’s about what we can do. We have to look ourselves in the mirror and view ourselves as the actors of society.”

He said capitalism is a dying system, but one that will not fall by its own weight. The Socialist Workers Party calls for a workers’ and farmers’ government, one that would “join in the worldwide struggle for socialism and human solidarity.”

“The future is in the hands of working people,” Koppel said.
 
 
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