CHICAGO — “The propertied rulers here are using the election to debate how they can close the city’s budget deficit on the backs of working people,” Dan Fein, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor, told Mary Gerrity (above, right) on her doorstep while he was campaigning in the North Side Chicago neighborhood of Jefferson Park Jan. 31. “I am a retired bus driver with the CTA [Chicago Transit Authority],” Garrity said, agreeing. “The city government just eliminated medical coverage for retirees like myself.”

“Balancing the capitalists’ state budget is their problem — it is their budget, not ours,” Fein said. “I’ll use the mayor’s office to fight all cuts to social programs that benefit working people and to back the fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage and full-time work.”

The previous weekend Fein was in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, attending the Wisconsin Farmers Union state convention, discussing what farmers face as prices for their milk and grain plummet and costs for seed, fertilizer and farm equipment continue to rise. “It is impossible to make capitalism work for workers and farmers,” Fein told Ed Gorell, a farmer from Eleva, Wisconsin, as he showed him an article in the Militant on the challenges facing farmers. “My party, the Socialist Workers Party, is a revolutionary party. Capitalism must be overturned and replaced by a government of workers and farmers.”

“I’ve seen the paper before. I got it at a farmers’ event,” Gorell said.

“We can look to the Cuban Revolution for inspiration and for an example of how to fight,” Fein said. ”My kind of socialists are the leaders of the Cuban Communist Party.”