Vol. 79/No. 42      November 23, 2015

 
(front page)

SWP campaign in Philadelphia:
‘We won because we built the party’

 
 
PHILADELPHIA — “The Socialist Workers Party campaign gave working people in Philadelphia a voice this year,” Osborne Hart, SWP candidate for mayor here, told supporters at an election night victory social at his home Nov. 3. Hart ran along with John Staggs, Socialist Workers Party candidate for City Council at-large.

“We won this campaign because we built the party and found great interest in our class-struggle program from those who joined in actions for $15 and a union, on the Steelworkers’ picket line in Coatesville and Conshohocken against ArcelorMittal’s take-away demands, against the cop beating and attempted frame-up of Tyree Carroll, in defense of the Americans with Disabilities Act and other struggles,” Hart said.

“We’ve set an example for the party’s 2016 campaign for president and state and city offices all across the country,” Staggs said. “We campaigned for a government-funded public works program, to build schools, hospitals, child care centers, parks and other infrastructure workers need. And we explained that workers need our own party, a labor party based on our unions.

“We’ve used the campaign to help build the Nov. 10 demonstration for $15 and a union,” he said. Both Hart and Staggs work at Walmart and are part of the movement for higher wages growing among lower-paid workers — now close to 50 percent of those with a job.

A number of people came who hadn’t attended a SWP event. Before the social, Staggs went to a town hall meeting of the Philadelphia Coalition for Racial, Economic and Legal Justice. The coalition has organized protests against police brutality and killings. The first point on the agenda was an appeal by Popeyes worker Shymara Jones to attend the Nov. 10 action for $15 and a union.

Ikea Coney, who has fought to bring to justice the cops who beat her son Darrin Manning and is active in the coalition, joined the socialist candidates at the social. Five teachers and staff from Germantown Friends School — co-workers of campaign supporter Ellen Berman — also came.

Staggs told how he had gone to Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, to participate in the 1,000-strong rally Oct. 11 demanding an end to the transport of hazardous cargo on rail tracks there until they are repaired and safe. In 2013 a 72-car oil train derailed and exploded, killing 47 people and destroying the center of the city.

“The protest also took up the defense of Tom Harding, the train’s engineer, and dispatcher Richard Labrie who face frame-up charges for the disaster,” Staggs said. “People there say the workers aren’t responsible for what happened, and that the railroad’s bosses and the government that let them operate with a one-man crew under unsafe conditions should be behind bars.”

Rail safety is an issue of special interest in Philadelphia. In May an Amtrak train derailed here, killing eight and injuring dozens more. And some 50 volatile oil trains rumble through the city every week. The Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in South Philadelphia gets delivery of more than 200 tankers a day.

“We demand rail workers have control over safety conditions on the job,” Staggs said. “And we fight for a crew of four on the trains to help each other and keep an eye on the train’s operation.”

The socialist candidates also spoke out against U.S. military intervention in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. They point to Cuba as an example of how, through revolutionary struggle, workers and farmers transformed themselves and took political power, building a workers and farmers government.

Building Nov. 10 actions

Since the election ended, Staggs, Hart and other campaigners for the SWP have continued to visit workers on their doorsteps to talk about the party and to build working-class protests, like the Nov. 10 rally.

Staggs and SWP member Janet Post visited with Elizabeth Wilcox and her daughter Lisa in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia Nov. 9 to discuss the rally. Post had met them campaigning the week before.

Elizabeth Wilcox, now retired, worked at McDonald’s for 30 years. Lisa Wilcox works at Dunkin’ Donuts and, because of the low pay, just got a second job at Pizza Hut.

“I worked at different McDonald’s, many of them franchised to local bosses,” Elizabeth Wilcox said. “This setup lets the local people set the wages, and they try and keep it as low as they can.”

The election was marked by low participation. “Voter turnout was just 25.62 percent for all the races on the ballot, and even lower, 23.7 percent, in the mayor’s race,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported the day after the vote.

Most workers didn’t see any serious proposals that would help them coming from Democratic, Republican or independent pro-capitalist candidates. So they stayed home.

“It’s the flip side of why workers are attracted to big meetings for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the presidential races,” Hart said. “Their experiences with the powers that be tell them something radically different is needed.

“It’s one of the reasons people respond to the Socialist Workers Party,” he said.

There was so little interest in the elections that the owners of the Philadelphia Citizen online newspaper tried to get people out by cynically offering a $10,000 reward for one voter picked at random.

While Jim Kenney, the Democratic candidate, received the most votes in the elections, Hart and Staggs got 1,214 and 2,949 respectively.

“We got more media coverage than in years previously because working people are searching for answers to the political and moral crisis of the capitalist system,” Hart told the Militant.

Staggs is speaking Nov. 11 on “Today in PhillyLabor,” a weekly radio program hosted by Joe Dougherty Jr., head of PhillyLabor.com; Pat Eiding, president of the Philadelphia AFL-CIO; and radio personality Joe Krause. He will be discussing the Nov. 10 actions.

The party will be joining family members and others protesting at the frame-up trial of Tyree Carroll next week.
 
 
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Join defense of SWP exemption from disclosing campaign donors
 
 
 
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