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Vol. 76/No. 16      April 23, 2012

 
Socialist Workers candidates
join working-class struggles
 
BY JOHN STUDER  
Socialist Workers party candidates are taking the campaign to factory gates, demonstrations demanding prosecution of Trayvon Martin’s killer, in working class neighborhoods and at other political events.

In Des Moines, Iowa, David Rosenfeld, SWP candidate for U.S. Congress in Iowa’s 3rd District, spoke at an NAACP-sponsored rally April 1 demanding that the vigilante that murdered Martin be charged.

“The capitalist rulers respond to their crisis by attacking our rights, living standards, and working conditions,” Rosenfeld said in a flyer distributed at the rally. “When workers stand up and resist—on the picket lines and protesting in the streets—we build confidence in our own power. As we strengthen working-class unity against racism, sexism and anti-immigrant attacks, we will advance our fighting capacity and discover our worth.”

There are three SWP candidates running in Iowa, Rosenfeld, Margaret Trowe for Iowa State Senate in the 18th District, and Helen Meyers for State House in District 36.

Trowe traveled with supporters to join a rally of 160 members of Teamsters Local 371 on strike against the Nichols Aluminum plant in Davenport, Iowa, March 26. They have been on strike since January.

Dan Barry, a shop steward who recently subscribed to the Militant, welcomed Trowe to the protest. “I really like the articles in that paper,” he said, “especially the one on capitalism and how joblessness is a necessary product of the crisis. It’s really true. And fights like ours are happening all over, not just here in the United States.”

Dennis Richter, SWP candidate for U.S. Congress in the 7th District of Illinois, centered in Chicago’s West Side, took the campaign door to door there, in the area near where 22-year-old Rekia Boyd was shot to death by an off-duty Chicago detective March 21.

Most residents knew about the shooting and supported the demand Richter raised that the detective be charged and arrested for murder.

John Hawkins, SWP candidate for U.S. Congress in the 1st District, also in Chicago, was one of three speakers at a Militant Labor Forum March 31, entitled “The Lynching of Trayvon Martin and the Criminalization of the Working Class.” Also on the panel were Steven Watts and Bishop Lance Davis, who are active in the fight against the Calumet City cop killing of Stephon Watts, Steven’s 15-year-old son.

“My son was killed on February 1 and on February 21 Trayvon Martin was killed,” Watts told the meeting. The cops “came into my house and shot my son right before my very eyes.”

Some 700 people turned out for Stephon Watts’ funeral and over a hundred marched from the Calumet City police station to city hall to demand charges against the cops who shot him.

The SWP in Houston launched four candidates at the beginning of April, Jacquie Henderson for U.S. Senate, Cindy Jaquith for Congress in the 9th District, Steve Warshell in the 18th District and Mike Fitzsimmons in the 29th District.

Mary Martin, SWP candidate for Washington state governor, has spoken at two rallies demanding the arrest of Trayvon Martin killer there.

Communist candidates are running in other countries as well. Paul Davies, a factory worker and member of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, is the Communist League candidate for the City and East constituency in the Greater London Assembly.

“Our campaign begins not with London, but with the world,” Davies told people on the street there as he spoke through a bullhorn. “It begins with how working people can organize and fight to respond to deepening assaults by the capitalist rulers and their parties—Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour.”  
 
 
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