Vol. 72/No. 47      December 1, 2008

Campaign supporters completed a petitioning effort November 15, collecting 1,015 signatures in a week. The city requires 500 registered voters to sign nominating petitions, but socialist campaigners took a goal of doubling that to be in the strongest position to fight any attempt to deny the party ballot status.

Vibiana Melchor, 21, a student at Pasadena Community College, signed the petition at the Ralph’s supermarket and subscribed to the Militant newspaper. “I don’t believe the Democrats or Republicans bring very much to the table,” she said. “They seem to be forgetting about us working people.”

Harris, 60, is a long-time leader of the SWP. He is running against incumbent mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of the Democratic Party and more than a dozen other candidates. The Republican Party is not running anyone against him in this formally “nonpartisan” election.

Harris addressed the deepening economic crisis facing working people at a meeting of supporters celebrating the successful completion of the petition campaign. Official unemployment in the Los Angeles area is 7.9 percent and it is estimated that 200,000 Californians will run out of unemployment benefits by the end of the year.

The economic crisis will force many workers “to think and act differently than most of us ever thought we would,” said Harris. “We will learn to see that economic problems such as getting a job, low pay, paying the rent, homelessness, and affording health care and education are not just personal problems, but they are problems we face as a class. And we will have to learn to face them as a class.

“Working people will have to learn how to build unions that can fight in our interests, that the Democratic and Republican parties cannot and will not represent us, and that working people need our own political party that can enter the political arena fighting for us.”

The SWP candidate pointed to the way in which the financial crisis is affecting the pensions of workers, from the decline in the value of 401(k)s to the crisis facing the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as Calpers. The nation’s largest public pension fund, Calpers recently lost 35 percent of its value due to investments in real estate.

“My campaign is pointing to the need for working people to take power out of the hands of the capitalist class, which has nothing but catastrophe in store for us through the workings of their system,” said Harris. “If I am elected mayor of Los Angeles the first thing I will do is propose legislation to shorten the workweek with no cut in take-home pay and launch a massive program of public works at union-scale wages to build homes, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, and public transportation. I will also propose emergency legislation to halt home foreclosures.”

The 1.5 million people who ride the buses and trains each day in Los Angeles County could soon face serious cuts in service and fare hikes, said Harris. AIG, the giant insurance company that was granted federal bailout money, has a huge interest in the trains and buses in the area. It provided $1 billion in loans to finance a scheme where the transit agencies sold buses and trains to investors and then leased them back. AIG also collected fees from the transit authorities to “insure” that the investors’ lease payments would be paid on time. Now that AIG’s credit ratings are down, the transit authorities have to find a new firm to guarantee the deals or rapidly reimburse investors.

Harris and campaign supporters participated in a demonstration of 12,000 at City Hall earlier in the day to protest the passage of Proposition 8 in the November elections. Proposition 8 changed the California constitution to deny the right of couples of the same sex to marry.

A statement distributed by the socialist campaign said, “The unity of workers and those who fight for social justice can be the most powerful weapon we have in confronting growing unemployment and home foreclosures, as well as Washington’s continued wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the surrounding region. Proposition 8 promotes division and opens the door to increased violent attacks against gays.”

The statement pointed to the example set by immigrant workers and their allies who “successfully pushed back reactionary legislation aimed at victimizing them and making them a permanent second-class section of society when they marched in their millions on May Day 2006.”  
 
 
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