Vol. 79/No. 13 April 13, 2015
The following statement by Maggie Trowe, Socialist Workers candidate for Congress in the 11th C.D. in New York, was released March 31. Trowe and Seth Galinsky, in State Assembly District 43 in Brooklyn, are the SWP candidates in the May 5 elections.
For the second time in a year, a gas explosion caused death and destruction in New York. Two people died and 22 were injured in the blast that demolished three buildings on the Lower East Side March 26.
No matter what is uncovered in the city government investigations now underway, one thing is clear. The disaster was the result of a system that puts profits before human safety and a government that represents the interests of the propertied rulers.
Con Edison says they can’t afford to rapidly replace the hundreds of miles of old corroding gas pipes across the city. Landlords maximize profits by spending as little time and money as possible on buildings that house the working class. The city government says it doesn’t have the $47.3 billion it would take to maintain the safety of New York’s aging infrastructure.
This is not a budgetary question, but a moral one.
When such disasters happen, the bosses and their government always try to blame the workers or one or another of their own to take our eyes off the true culprit, the profit-driven capitalist system.
My campaign calls for a massive, government-funded public works program to provide jobs for those thrown out of work by the capitalist economic crisis, to rebuild crumbling infrastructure, including decrepit gas and electric lines, and build housing, public transportation, schools, day care centers, and hospitals that working people badly need.
I support unionists fighting to take greater control over conditions on the job, like the Steelworkers engaged in a national strike against the oil barons under the banner “Safe refineries save lives.” Workers control is the only way we can guarantee safety at work and for surrounding communities.
No boss, landlord, capitalist politician or government regulator will guarantee safe gas lines or safe anything else. Only the working class has the moral interest to do so.
Through strikes, organizing drives and solidarity with social struggles — from the fight against police brutality to the defense of a woman’s right to choose abortion — we transform ourselves, thinking socially and acting politically, gaining confidence in ourselves and the working class as a whole. Along this road we will rebuild our unions, organize a fighting labor party and build a movement of millions to overthrow the dictatorship of capital and replace it with a government of workers and farmers.
The Cuban Revolution overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959 and brought the toilers to power. For more than 56 years they have defended their sovereignty and socialist revolution against Washington’s embargoes, invasions and threats. Their example of internationalism and human solidarity, like that shown by the medical volunteers leading the fight against Ebola in West Africa, stand today as an example of what working people in power can accomplish.
Related articles:
Capitalist greed is driving force behind deadly NY gas explosion
D.C.: Socialist candidate backs fight for workers control
London meeting debates cop ‘stop and search’
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