Socialist campaigners here are taking this message to working people in response to stepped-up U.S. threats against north Korea.

In an afternoon of campaigning October 7, working people signed petitions to put Craine on the ballot as an official write-in candidate. Campaign supporters easily surpassed the required number of 40 signatures.

That evening, at a “Meet the Socialist Workers Party Candidates” forum, Craine described some of the responses socialists got in Maywood, a working-class suburb.

“A woman who worked as a cleaner and had taken part in the May 1 demonstration for the legalization of all immigrants liked the fact that our campaign connects the need to organize and use our unions with the fight for the legalization of all undocumented immigrants,” Craine said.

She noted that this was a polarized discussion. Another worker who was Latina, for example, voiced opposition to legalization, arguing that immigrants made things harder for her kids.

One of the signers of the petition in that area said it was important to draw Blacks into the fight to legalize immigrants because of the activities of the rightist Minutemen, who are trying to recruit some African-Americans to their thuggish, anti-immigrant actions.

“Yes, this is not just an immigrant issue,” Craine said. “The big majority in the huge pro-legalization marches this year have been workers. Their actions pose the need to unionize all workers as a life-and-death question for the labor movement.”

At the campaign forum Michael Ortega, SWP candidate for U.S. Congress in the 35th District, addressed the health-care crisis facing working people. “Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center has been the target of cutbacks and is back on the chopping block. This hospital, in a Black and Latino community, should not be closed,” he said.

“What is needed is not simply an increase in funding but the complete socialization of the medical system,” Ortega said. “As long as the system of profit exists, human beings in need of health care will be treated as commodities.”

In Cuba, where workers and farmers have taken political power and made a socialist revolution, Ortega pointed out, “You can see what the revolution has accomplished. This includes some of the lowest infant mortality rates of any country, a focus on preventive medicine, doctors who make house calls,” and the sending of volunteer doctors to other countries.

Also speaking were SWP candidates James Harris for governor of California, Joel Britton for San Francisco Board of Education, David Argüello for U.S. Congress in the 51st District, and Lea Sherman for U.S. Senate.

On September 23, Argüello and other socialist campaigners took part in a countermobilization of 200 immigrant rights supporters in National City against a protest by the Minutemen.

The socialists collected signatures to win official write-in status for Argüello’s campaign. Enrique Morones, founder of the immigrant rights group Border Angels, invited Argüello to speak on his Spanish-language radio program.
 
 
Related articles:
Communist League candidate backs Toronto transit workers  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home