Vol. 75/No. 29      August 8, 2011

Hoeppner is running on the Socialist Workers Party ticket for U.S. Congress in the 9th District in parts of Queens and Brooklyn. The special election is September 13.

“One of the first things I’d do is use my office in Congress to help working people organize a social movement in the streets to fight for a massive, federally funded public works program, as well as a law shortening the workweek with no cut in pay, to create jobs,” the candidate told people. “The funds would come out of the bosses’ profits, which they take from the wealth working people produce with our labor.”

Tiffany Joyner, a teacher at the Institute of Technology in Media, Pennsylvania, told Hoeppner about the cuts and layoffs at her school. “I get no benefits,” she said.

“How do we fight this?” responded Hoeppner. “We need a revolution like they had in Cuba. Working people run that country. The idea of turning people away from the hospital because they have no insurance card is unheard of there.”

Hoeppner explained the difference between what the capitalist parties call “politics” and what the socialist campaign presents. “The capitalists have their two parties, the Democrats and Republicans. Neither of them is on our side, neither represents working people,” he said.

“When my campaign talks about politics, we’re talking about what workers do together” to defend ourselves, Hoeppner said. “We’ve done it before. Look at the massive struggle of millions to end segregation. Working people did that, in the streets.”

Both Hoeppner’s opponents, Democrat David Weprin and Republican Robert Turner, argue that cutbacks in health care, pensions, and schools are necessary to “balance the budget.”

“Everyone agrees that we must tighten our belts,” Weprin told the Douglaston Patch, a Queens community website.

“I’m not a socialist, but the government better get its stuff together, because the average person’s had enough,” said T.J. Manning, a book printer, as he grabbed a flyer from Hoeppner. “These politicians go to Washington and separate themselves from the people who elected them.”

New campaign supporter Virgen López accompanied Hoeppner as he introduced the socialist campaign to people at the fair. “It was nothing like I thought it would be,” she said afterward. “I thought we would be rejected. But people were open. They gave us their insights.

“Everybody’s going through the same thing—unemployment, cuts. We talked to one single mother with two kids who just lost her job.” A Bronx resident all her life, López works in a pharmaceutical factory. Would she campaign with Hoeppner again? “Of course!” she replied.

Mina Ertas, a student, also campaigned with Hoeppner. “When Chris talked about legalizing immigrants and a federal public works program to create jobs, people started listening. One man told him he didn’t disagree but Chris wouldn’t have any chance against the two-party monopoly. Chris said, ‘We have to start somewhere.’”

Longtime Democratic Party leader and former New York mayor Edward Koch announced July 25 that he is endorsing Republican Turner in the election to send a message to President Barack Obama, who he says wants to throw Israel “under the bus.” Koch opposes Obama’s remark that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”

Weprin told the Daily News that “I’m probably the most pro-Israel candidate around” and said it was “untenable for Israel to retreat to its pre-67 borders,” according to the Politicker.

The Socialist Workers Party campaign calls for a democratic, secular Palestine, where the national rights of the dispossessed Palestinian people are restored and no one has special rights based on religious or other beliefs. Arab and Jewish working people—whether in the fight for Palestinian rights or other social battles—will come to recognize the need for class solidarity and the fight for workers power, both in Israel and across the Middle East.

A democratic secular Palestine will guarantee the right of refuge to any Jew fleeing the anti-Semitic scapegoating and terror that will accompany intensifying capitalist breakdowns in years to come.
 
 
Related articles:
Socialist candidate in N.Y.- ‘Choice is a woman’s right’
N.Y. weekly interviews Hoeppner  
 
 
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