Vol. 79/No. 30 August 24, 2015
“The SWP campaign is the only campaign in the U.S. that represents the interests of working people and presents a revolutionary perspective,” Staggs told the Militant. “The response our municipal campaign has received shows the potential for the SWP presidential campaign.”
Fifteen months before the 2016 elections, the campaign of the capitalist parties is heating up, with 17 Republicans vying for the nomination, front-running Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign sputtering and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, running second in the polls for the Democratic nomination and drawing big crowds.
While knocking on doors in working-class neighborhoods with petitions to get on the ballot and at labor rallies and social actions, “SWP campaigners talk about the need for a labor party based on the unions,” Staggs said. “We need to break from the Democrats, the Republicans and the ‘independents’ who propose Band-Aids to patch up the capitalist system.”
Staggs and Hart are workers at Walmart who are involved in the fight for $15 an hour, a union and full-time hours at the retail giant.
Crowds for Sanders growing
Sanders has been attracting crowds — some 28,000 in Portland, Oregon, Aug. 9, and a similar number the next day in Los Angeles. His favorability rating doubled from 12 percent in March to 24 percent in late July, while Clinton’s dropped from 48 to 43 percent.“As the crisis of the capitalist system grinds on, and attacks on workers deepen, many are looking for something different in 2016,” Staggs said.
“The interest in the Sanders campaign opens up a discussion,” he said. “People ask, ‘Are you a socialist like Bernie Sanders?’ We explain that Sanders proposes radical reforms to save capitalism.
“Sanders, in his ‘Reforming Wall Street’ plank, proposes breaking up the six biggest banks and taxing financial transactions. We think workers must end the dictatorship of capital and reorganize society based on relations of human solidarity. And we don’t have an American nationalist framework,” said Staggs. “We start with the world and what strengthens the working class worldwide on the road to taking power.
“We point to the example of Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement that led workers and farmers to power in Cuba,” he said. “Like Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who led workers and farmers to power in Russia.”
Sanders took some criticism from supporters of immigrant rights after his comments during a July 28 Vox interview when journalist Ezra Klein implied he supports “open borders.”
“Open borders?” Sanders exclaimed. “No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal,” referring to Charles and David Koch, billionaire manufacturers who contribute heavily to Republican campaigns and who favor less restrictive immigration laws.
“You’re doing away with the concept of a nation state,” he continued. “What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them.”
However, at the Los Angeles rally, Sanders had an immigrant rights supporter speak and said, “Eleven million people cannot continue to live in fear.”
Immigration policy has been prominent in the primary debate. In June Donald Trump slandered Mexican immigrants, saying, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, another Republican contender, defended Trump June 30, saying, “The American people are fed up” with illegal immigration.
Republican candidate Jeb Bush called Trump’s comments “vulgar” during a July 27 interview in Spanish on Telemundo. Bush promotes an “immigration reform” that includes a path to legal status, but not citizenship, for some immigrants.
Clinton — following the San Francisco arrest of an undocumented worker in a July 1 killing — denounced the city’s “sanctuary city” policy of not turning people who lack immigration papers over to immigration authorities.
“The SWP says no to deportations, no to E-Verify,” Staggs said. “The labor movement must reject the rulers’ divide-and-conquer tactics and stand with immigrants who insist, ‘We’re workers, not criminals.’”
Defending right to choose abortion
Trump gets a hearing because of his shoot-from-the-hip, iconoclastic style, which has received more attention than his reactionary political views. But his sexist comments about women have been met with outrage by many.During a Fox News debate reporter Megyn Kelly told Trump, “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.’” After the debate, speaking to a CNN reporter, Trump said of Kelly, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” This remark drew widespread denunciation.
All the Republican candidates except former New York Gov. George Pataki oppose a woman’s right to abortion.
“The Socialist Workers Party explains a woman has the right to control her body and needs to be able to choose abortion if she wishes,” Staggs said. “It’s a basic question of equal rights and critical to strengthening the unity of the working class.”
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