Vol. 72/No. 2      January 14, 2008

Róger Calero, 38, is the party’s candidate for president of the United States. Alyson Kennedy, 57, is its candidate for vice president. Calero, a writer for the Militant, and Kennedy, a garment worker, are joined by more than 30 SWP candidates for local, state, and federal offices in 12 states and the District of Columbia (see biographies of Kennedy and Calero, and initial candidates’ list on page 6).

Supporters of the socialist ticket will be campaigning at factory plant gates, joining candidates’ debates, participating in labor and other political actions, and raising money from workers. They will also be petitioning to get the SWP candidates on the ballot in as many states as possible.

Truthfully explaining the unfolding capitalist economic crisis and its consequences for the lives, job safety, and social conditions of working people is at the heart of the socialist campaign. The SWP campaign puts forward demands to defend workers and farmers from the attempts by the bosses and their government to shift the burden of their decaying system onto the backs of working people.

“Whether it’s Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Rudolph Giuliani, Mitt Romney, or any other Democrat or Republican, no capitalist candidate offers solutions for working people,” said Kennedy in an interview. “They are just looking out for the interests of the rich. Working people need to organize to defend our own interests.”

She said working people need their own political party—“a labor party based on a fighting trade union movement, to effectively fight for our interests in the political arena.”

The Socialist Workers campaign “advances a course that will unify the working class in order to fight effectively and win,” Calero said.

He noted that rising prices and unemployment “are among the most ruinous problems facing working people when capitalism has a financial crisis like the one developing today. We call for a sliding scale of wages and hours, so that when prices go up, wages go up to match. When unemployment spreads, hours should be reduced with no cut in pay to spread the available work around.”

The socialist candidates for federal, state, and local offices are also raising demands that aim to unify working people worldwide. These demands point to the need to organize a movement of millions that can take political power out of the hands of the ruling capitalists and establish a workers and farmers government.  
 
Campaign in Northern California
“The Socialist Workers campaign demands the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the multiple theaters of Washington’s ‘global war on terror,’ from Iraq and Afghanistan to the Philippines and Somalia,” said Lea Sherman, a meatpacking worker in Fremont, California, who is the SWP candidate for U.S. Congress in California’s 8th Congressional District.

“None of the other candidates provide a perspective in the interests of working people, who today are being battered by the spreading world capitalist financial crisis,” she added.

Sherman’s opponents are Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; Republican Dana Walsh; and Cindy Sheehan, a well-known opponent of the Iraq war who is running as an independent.

Sam Manuel is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for City Council At-Large in Washington, D.C. A veteran militant in the labor and Black rights movements, Manuel, 58, has helped organize activities in defense of the Cuban Revolution. He has reported for the Militant from New Orleans, getting out the truth about the social disaster that has unfolded there in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The SWP is running Rebecca Williamson, 26, for U.S. Congress in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District. A member of the Young Socialists, Williamson is a meat packer at Dakota Premium Foods in South St. Paul, Minnesota, and is active in United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789. She has helped build actions against Washington’s wars abroad, and has been involved in fights to defend women’s rights.

Eleanor García, 55, is running for U.S. Senate from Georgia. García is a sewing machine operator in Bowdon, Georgia. She has marched alongside fellow workers in street protests to demand the legalization of all immigrants.  
 
Socialist Workers ticket in Florida
“Our campaign is part of the fight for legalization of immigrants—Latino, Haitian, and Asian,” said Margaret Trowe, 59, the SWP candidate for U.S. Congress in Florida’s District 17, who is a sewing machine operator.

The Socialist Workers campaign in Florida is also running garment spreader Omari Musa, 63, for mayor of Miami-Dade County. Musa, a founding member of the National Black Independent Political Party in the 1980s, has joined protests in Miami’s African American and Haitian communities demanding that cops who have killed young Blacks in recent months be prosecuted and jailed.

To get involved with the socialist campaign, contact Militant distributors listed on page 8, or: Socialist Workers National Campaign, P.O. Box 31322, San Francisco, CA 94131, or socworknatlcamp@sbcglobal.net.
 
 
Related articles:
Róger Calero, SWP candidate for president
Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. vice president
SWP will seek to renew disclosure exemption
Support socialist ticket in ’08!
SWP candidate across the United States  
 
 
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