The Militant - March 18, 2013 -- SWP launches election campaigns in New York

Vol. 77/No. 10 March 18, 2013

SWP launches election
campaigns in New York

BY SETH GALINSKY
NEW YORK—“I think it’s a great idea,” said Ebony Gamble after hearing John Studer, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor here, explain why working people need to fight for a massive government-funded public works program “to combat unemployment by building the things we need, including hospitals, housing, public transportation, day care centers.”

Gamble was laid off from her job in data entry before Christmas. “I thought we needed something like that even before I met him, the way the economy’s going,” she said later. Gamble purchased a subscription to the Militant.

A couple of blocks away a woman who answered the door also liked the idea of a public works program. “But not for jails,” she interjected. “We don’t need jails.”

Studer and his supporters were going door to door March 3 in East New York, a mostly African-American working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, campaigning and selling subscriptions to the Militant and revolutionary literature. It was the first day of campaigning for the candidacies of Studer for mayor and Rebecca Williamson for New York City Comptroller.

“Going door to door we found that most workers today know that the bosses’ parties, the Democrats and Republicans, have no solutions to the crisis we face. They are open to a discussion of what can be done, including about the example of the Cuban Revolution,” Studer said.

The socialist candidate often pointed to articles in the latest issue of the Militant about the role Cuban volunteers played in defeating the invasion of Angola by the white supremacist regime of South Africa in the 1970s and ’80s. “Many working people realize that Cuba is different,” Studer said. “And they are interested in the books we have that document the lessons of the revolution.”

The Socialist Workers Party also announced this week its candidates in Seattle. (See article beginning on front page.) Last week the party won ballot status for Maura DeLuca and Jacob Perasso for mayor and city council respectively in Omaha, Neb. SWP candidates Maggie Trowe, Ellen Brickley and David Rosenfeld are running for city council in Des Moines, Iowa; John Hawkins in a special election in Illinois’ Congressional District 2; Laura Garza in a special election for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts; Norton Sandler for mayor of Los Angeles and Eleanor García for Los Angeles Unified School Board, District 2; and Tom Baumann for mayor of Miami. In Houston, Jacquie Henderson was the SWP write-in candidate in the election for Texas Senate District 6 that took place March 2.