Vol. 71/No. 29      August 6, 2007

Staggs, a packinghouse worker, and Hart, a warehouse worker and member of UNITE HERE Local 237, presented the party’s platform starting with the interests of workers and farmers worldwide.

The socialist candidates also invited campaign supporters to help collect 4,000 signatures from July 14 to 22 to gain ballot status for the candidates. In the first weekend, campaign supporters collected 1,583 signatures.

At the forum, Staggs said the Socialist Workers campaign calls for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. and all other imperialist troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other fronts of Washington’s “global war on terror.” The campaign also calls on working people to oppose Washington’s economic sanctions and military threats against Iran, its cold war against Cuba and, its meddling in Venezuela.

Hart spoke earlier that day at an event in Philadelphia building the June 27-July 1 U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, in which he later took part. Hart pointed to the 24 killings by police in Philadelphia this year. He said that Democratic Party candidate Michael Nutter’s calls for “stop-question-and-frisk” procedures for cops would only increase these assaults and pointed to the importance of joining fights against police brutality.

He also called for an end to immigration raids and deportations. Pointing to the significance of the huge outpourings on May Day over the last two years, Hart explained why the socialist campaign champions the struggle for legalization of all immigrants. The questions of class consciousness and solidarity posed in that fight, he said, are “part of the fight to eliminate the national, ethnic, and racial divisions between workers.”
 
 
Related articles:
SWP candidate poised to get on ballot in Pittsburgh  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home