The only candidates that addressed this reality are those of the Socialist Workers Party. The socialists put forward, as a central question for working people everywhere, the need to use union power—or to organize unions where we don’t have them—as the only road to defend the interests of workers and farmers.

The profit drive is killing not only miners—45 this year alone, including two killed on the job November 4-5 in Arizona and Kentucky. In New York, Klever Ramiro Jara fell to his death from a scaffolding November 1 at a building site where the company had not met several basic requirements. He was the 17th New York construction worker killed on the job in the past year—mostly immigrants—as the city’s big contractors rake in millions from the building boom.

As the Socialist Workers Party candidates put forward in their platform, “Working people face an unrelenting offensive by the employers, who—driven by the need to reverse their declining profit rates—are intensifying speedup, closing plants, slashing jobs, lengthening work hours, eroding job safety, cutting pensions and health-care coverage, and seeking to undermine Social Security and break down class solidarity.”

In face of these assaults, the SWP candidates called for unionizing all workers and unconditional legalization of all immigrants. For socializing health care to provide universal, federally guaranteed, lifetime medical coverage for everyone. For government-funded, affordable credit for working farmers and price supports to cover production costs. For nationalizing the energy monopolies under workers’ control of industry. For defending a woman’s right to choose and opposing all restriction on access to abortion. And other demands aimed at uniting workers and farmers in struggle against the ruling exploiters.

To defend our interests, working people must start with the world: from the defense of Korea against threats by Washington and its allies, to opposition to the imperialist drive to prevent semicolonial nations from developing nuclear power and other energy sources needed to bring much of humanity out of darkness.

The socialist candidates point to the living example of the Cuban Revolution, which shows the road forward both in the United States and worldwide: to build a revolutionary movement that will lead a fight by working people and our allies to take power out of the hands of the ruling billionaire class, establish a workers and farmers government, and join the worldwide struggle for socialism.

This is the perspective the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialists are continuing to campaign for 365 days a year. If you agree with it and want to be part of bringing it about, join today!
 
 
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