(lead article)
SWP candidates across United States say:
Vote Socialist Workers Nov. 7!
Unionize all workers! Legalize immigrants now!
U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Korea!
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| Militant/Edwin Fruit |
The Stretch/Joe Wyatt |
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Left: Diana Newberry, SWP candidate for governor of Iowa, campaigns October 31 at entrance to Firestone plant in Des Moines. Right: Striking Goodyear workers rally October 27 in Tyler, Texas.
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BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
October 31—A week before the mid-term elections, Socialist Workers candidates are joining working-class struggles across the United States and taking the party's platform to thousands.
"Solidarity with the Goodyear strikers! Read Militant," said signs Diana Newberry, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Iowa, and SWP campaign supporters held at the gate of the Firestone plant in Des Moines, Iowa, today, reported Frank Forrestal, socialist candidate for secretary of agriculture in Iowa.
"The Goodyear workers are standing up to the bosses who are trying to cut wages, do away with retirees' health care, and slash thousands of jobs," Newberry told workers driving in who stopped when they saw the signs. "They deserve everyone's support. The strikers are up against what most working people face: a brutal offensive by the bosses who, driven by their profit greed, are going after workers' wages, health, and safety. That's why the socialist campaign supports all struggles by workers to organize unions and mobilize union power to defeat the bosses' attacks."
"I need the Militant to follow what's going on with the Goodyear strike," said one of the workers, according to Forrestal. "The socialist election campaign and the Militant are getting a good response from these workers," Forrestal said. "In the past three weeks, since the Goodyear strike began, about 20 Firestone workers have bought the Militant and five have subscribed, four at the plant gate and one during campaigning door-to-door in town."
Many of the 1,400 workers at the Des Moines Bridgestone/Firestone plant, who are members of United Steelworkers Local 310, "are following the Goodyear strike closely," Forrestal said. "Their own contract expired July 22. One worker who subscribed to the Militant said the word circulating inside the plant is that there will be no contract until the Goodyear strike is settled." Firestone employs 6,000 at eight U.S. plants. Workers report the company is seeking cuts in wages, medical benefits, and pensions, and is planning to shut down a plant in Oklahoma City, Forrestal said.
"Many workers are also receptive to our explanation that imperialist wars abroad are an extension of the assaults by the employers and the government on the living and job conditions of workers and farmers at home," Newberry said.
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"We are for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of U.S. and all 'coalition' troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. End Washington's cold war against Cuba! Hands off Venezuela!" says the statement by Nelson Gonzalez, SWP candidate for governor of Minnesota, printed in the November/December issue of Insight, the magazine of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789 in Minnesota. Insight published biographies, along with photos and excerpts of the campaign platforms of Gonzalez and socialist senatorial candidate Rebecca Williamson, both members of the local. Gonzalez, a meatpacker, supported striking mechanics at Northwest Airlines, the candidate's biography says.
"Williamson, 25, is a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate and a trimmer at Dakota Premium Foods in South St. Paul," reads the biography of the other socialist candidate. "She actively supports the fight for legalization of all undocumented immigrants now and opposes government immigration raids and other attacks."
"Millions declared in mass rallies and strikes this year, 'We are workers, not criminals!' " reads Williamson's statement printed in Insight. "These actions, involving up to 2 million in the streets nationwide, have shown that the unprecedented immigration of the last decades and the integration of these workers into the hereditary proletariat of the United States have strengthened the working class palpably and irreversibly."
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The socialist campaign is also getting attention abroad. Below are excerpts from an interview with Martín Koppel, SWP candidate for Attorney General in New York, which appeared in the October 20 online edition of Invasor, a newspaper in Ciego de ávila, Cuba, under the headline, “In the United States we have to make a social revolution.” Sayli Sosa Barceló and Luis Raúl Vázquez did the interview.
—In the U.S. political context, what does the Socialist Workers Party represent?
—“We primarily work in industries such as coal, garment, and meatpacking, which are where the offensive of the bosses has been most intense and brutal. Many people work more than two jobs in order to survive. That is where we work, organizing unions, strikes, and other types of protests.
“We put forward as an alternative that working people take power, as the only way to end exploitation. Those ideas now get more of a response owing to the economic conditions that exist.
“We are running a ticket in the New York election and throughout the country. We are running against the Democrats, Republicans, and all other capitalist parties.
“Our campaign begins with the world, not with the United States or New York.
“In the international sphere, we oppose the threats against Korea. Right now the U.S. government is trying to impose very severe economic sanctions, including the right to piracy, that is, to board Korean ships, search and confiscate them.
“We defend Iran against the threats by the U.S. government. Along those lines, we support the right of all semicolonial countries to develop the energy sources they need, including nuclear energy, to be able to increase access to electricity, which is a prerequisite for social and economic advances. Iran needs nuclear energy to be able to close the gap between rich and poor.
“We call for the nationalization of the energy monopolies, even more when oil prices are so high, and every so often there are blackouts in our country. In New York, for example, a community in Queens was left without electricity for over a week with no valid explanation.
“We support the need to socialize the system of health care, to extend it as a universal right. In addition, we call for abolishing the death penalty and police brutality in our streets.”
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