Staggs crossed out the “loyalty oath,” a reactionary requirement, on Pennsylvania’s books since 1951, requiring a candidate to state that he is “not a subversive person.”

On July 25, after being told by officials from the Pennsylvania Department of State that the Socialist Workers campaign intended to challenge the anti-subversive measure in court, Pennsylvania attorney general Thomas Corbett told them to “discontinue use of the oath.”

“We were consulted by the Department of State,” William Frederiksen, spokesperson for the state attorney general, told the Militant, “and we advised them that the matter had been settled by the [U.S.] Supreme Court in 1974. The case ruling is very clear.”

After a brief discussion, officials of the state Bureau of Commissions, Elections, and Legislation accepted the petitions for Staggs.

“By filing today, and refusing to sign the ‘loyalty oath,’ we have affirmed this significant victory for political rights.” said Staggs, a packinghouse worker in Philadelphia. “It strengthens the working class and labor movement. It puts us on a better footing to resist the capitalists’ assault on our living standards and job conditions, as well as their wars and preparations for war against other working people, from the Middle East to South America and the Caribbean.”

Osborne Hart, the Socialist Workers candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, joined Staggs and other campaign supporters in the state capital to file the petitions. Both in Pennsylvania and across the country, Hart said, the capitalist government has sought “to maintain restrictions like this to try to muzzle worker and farmer resistance. Today, our campaign is calling on working people to speak out and protest the murderous assault by the Israeli government on the people of Lebanon and Washington’s support for this war,” he said.  
 
‘Not a single miner has to die’
“We are campaigning to advance support for workers’ struggles to organize unions and use them to turn back the bosses’ attacks,” said Hart.

“We say that not one single miner has to die in the country’s mines,” he explained, pointing to the death on July 30 of Jermey Heckler, a contract welder at the Star Bridge coal preparation plant in Mill Creek, West Virginia. Heckler is the 37th coal miner to die from the bosses’ profit drive since the beginning of the year.

“There is only one effective tool coal miners can use to ensure mine safety: a local of the United Mine Workers of America in every single mine,” said Hart, whose running mate for lieutenant governor is Anthony Lane, an underground coal miner in the Pittsburgh area. “A strong union can organize to enforce safety standards in the mines and walk off the job if the coal operators refuse to do so.”

The ruling against this “reactionary oath,” Hart said, “will encourage those, like ourselves, who are involved in the fight to defeat anti-working-class attacks on immigrants, from Hazleton, Pennsylvania, to Riverside, New Jersey.

“The massive working-class mobilizations point the road to unity for the working class,” he said. Labor must not only demand the legalization of all immigrants, but above all throw the power and resources of the union movement into this fight—in the streets, in workplaces, and in working-class communities across the U.S.”

Struggles such as these underscore the need for working people to take another step forward and build a labor party—our own party, based on the unions, independent of the Democrats, Republicans, and all other capitalist parties—to fight for the interests of working people.”

The SWP platform points to the necessary strategy for working people to win, said Hart, “a course toward building a revolutionary movement to take power out of the hands of the capitalists, establish a workers and farmers government, and join the worldwide struggle for socialism.”
 
 
Related articles:
Socialist Workers candidates in Iowa: ‘Israeli troops out of Lebanon and Gaza now!’
A victory for political rights
SWP launches California ticket  
 
 
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