Vol. 77/No. 31      August 26, 2013

Militant/Asha Ramachandra

Margaret Trowe, Socialist Workers candidate for Des Moines city council, introduces retired hotel cleaner Essie Benson to working-class campaign after knocking on her door. Benson subscribed to Militant and was among 425 who signed to put party on ballot Aug. 10-11.

BY DAVID ROSENFELD  
DES MOINES, Iowa — “The heart of our campaign has been going door to door talking with workers throughout the city,” Margaret Trowe, one of three Socialist Workers Party candidates for city council here, told 30 people packed into the campaign headquarters Aug. 10 for a fundraising dinner and meeting to hear the candidates and discuss the two-day drive to put them on the ballot.

“We decided to organize gathering signatures to get on the ballot the same way,” Trowe said, “and it was an unqualified success.”

Four hundred twenty-five people in Des Moines signed up to put Trowe, Ellen Brickley and David Rosenfeld on the ballot — 165 more than the number required. Twenty-one volunteers from Omaha, Neb.; Twin Cities, Minn.; Chicago; and New York joined campaigners in Des Moines.

While campaigning, supporters sold 13 subscriptions to the Militant, 31 copies of the paper, and five books, including Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power and The Cuban Five.

“We talked to fellow workers about the need to raise the minimum wage and to fight for a massive government-funded jobs program,” Brickley told those at the meeting. “By doing it door to door we got into a lot of rich discussions about what workers are going through, what they are thinking and about our program to build working-class solidarity and confidence along the road to the fight for workers power. Nearly everyone we spoke with signed our petitions.”

Addressing the rally, Jacob Perasso, who ran for city council in Omaha earlier this year, described the work of building the Socialist Workers Party there.

“The rulers have indicated that they do not appreciate the SWP being in Omaha,” said Perasso, commenting on the party’s response to a July 16 political break-in into his home. The culprit left political files strewn about the apartment, while ignoring valuable items in plain sight, he said. The only thing taken was a cellphone containing the records of phone calls and emails Perasso made while participating in a fight against police brutality in north Omaha.

“We pushed the attack back by responding right away, getting the word out widely and stepping up our political campaigning in working-class areas,” he explained. “We put the rulers on notice that we will not be intimidated. Now we are moving forward to establish a branch of the Socialist Workers Party in Omaha, open up a public campaign headquarters and run candidates in the next election.”

Dan Fein, SWP candidate for mayor of New York who flew in to help, described his participation in a delegation to Egypt to express solidarity with workers and farmers there who defended their political space by mobilizing in massive numbers to oust the increasingly unpopular Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi. “We found the biggest gain is increased confidence of the working class,” said Fein.

“I am proud to call Maggie Trowe, David Rosenfeld, and Ellen Brickley my sisters, brother, and comrades in the struggle for the working class,” Buddy Howard, president of the Lee County Labor Council, said in a message to the meeting. Howard explained that he had met the SWP when “me and 237 of my fellow workers were unjustly locked out of our jobs” by Roquette America at its corn processing plant in Keokuk, Iowa, from September 2010 to July 2011.

“I have had the privilege of traveling with them to other struggles,” Howard wrote. “Just look at their platform, whether it’s defending a woman’s right to choose abortion or defending the Cuban Five.

“Finally someone speaks with honesty,” he said, “who doesn’t bow down to the minimum ‘two parties,’ who will never obsequiously succumb to the powers that be.”

Campaigner Helen Meyers met Dan Englstrom, 25, after knocking on his apartment door. “If the minimum wage was raised it would mean I wouldn’t have to decide whether I was going to eat or pay my bills or have anything else left over,” Englstrom, who works at McDonald’s making $7.50 per hour, told Meyers.

Fein and fellow campaigner Jacquie Henderson talked with waitress Kelly Vincent on her porch about the fight of fast-food workers for $15 per hour and a union. “I am very much for that,” said Vincent, who makes $4.35 an hour. “They say we can make up the difference to the $7.25 an hour minimum wage with tips. But we can’t live on that.”  
 
 
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