Vol. 80/No. 22 June 6, 2016
(front page)
As capitalist crisis deepens openings for SWP grow
That’s what SWP members find as they campaign to build the party in working-class neighborhoods, as well as at picket lines and factory gates across the country.
Knocking on doors in working-class towns across New Jersey, party members have been going to a wide range of neighborhoods, meeting workers they will keep in touch with in the future and working to put Alyson Kennedy and Osborne Hart, the SWP candidates for U.S. president and vice president, on the ballot.
“My husband can’t work because he was injured on the job,” said pharmaceutical worker Emilia Bautista on her porch in Rahway, New Jersey, May 22. “I’m the breadwinner, and it’s hard to pay the $12,000 a year property tax and other bills. I like what you’re saying about building a working-class movement.”
Hart, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in New York Jacob Perasso and supporters will file 1,440 signatures, well over the 800 required, in Trenton May 26 to put Hart and Kennedy on the ballot.
Campaigning to get on the ballot is also underway in Minnesota, Washington and Tennessee. The Socialist Workers Party takes advantage of these efforts to discuss with thousands of working people the economic and political crisis of capitalism, and above all the possibility of building a working-class movement capable of displacing the dictatorship of capital and replacing it with a workers and farmers government whose foundation is moral values of human solidarity.
Biggest crisis of capitalism in decades
After decades of assaults on unions, wages and working conditions, which have deepened since the financial crisis opened in 2007, millions of workers are fed up with bourgeois politics-as-usual. Against the backdrop of the 2016 elections, there is growing ferment and discussion on how to break with the past and what to do.
The crisis manifests itself in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Despite virulent attacks by liberals, radicals and conservatives alike, and the Republican and Democratic Party establishments, Donald Trump, who attracts huge crowds of workers, has routed 16 opponents and all but secured the Republican nomination. The hysteria around his campaign stems not from the rulers’ fear of the New York real estate magnate but from their fear of the active entry on the political scene of the workers who come to his rallies, and what that portends for rising resistance to the bosses’ attacks.
Republican Party leaders are increasingly capitulating to Trump’s victory and lining up behind his run to November. They know that when all is said and done, he’ll do as the ruling families want.
The battle for the Democratic Party nomination continues. Front-runner Hillary Clinton, wife of two-term president Bill Clinton, makes a negative impression on 61 percent of voters, according to a May 18 Fox News poll. The Clintons’ anti-labor legacy — from “ending welfare as we know it” to attacks on immigrant workers and soaring incarceration rates — doesn’t sit well with many workers.
She announced she will put Bill Clinton in charge of the economic revitalization of the U.S., which is not reassuring to miners and other workers who faced job cuts and cuts in social programs for much of the 1990s.
Clinton’s rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has won a majority of the recent Democratic party primaries and drawn big crowds with his refrain that the economy and political establishments are “rigged.” Sanders has vowed to stay in the race through the July Democratic Party convention, and many Sanders supporters say they won’t vote for Clinton if she is the party’s nominee.
Taking its campaign to the working class, the Socialist Workers Party says working people need to break from all the parties and candidates of the capitalist system and chart a course toward organizing independently and taking political power themselves.
The SWP is organizing an Active Workers Conference June 16-18 in Oberlin, Ohio. This will be an opportunity for workers from across the U.S. and from other countries to discuss these questions, exchange experiences and arm ourselves politically.
Beth Cribbs, a member of United Steelworkers Local 1196 in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, who was among 2,200 unionists locked out by Allegheny Technologies for more than six months, is planning to attend.
Cribbs, a shipper and crane operator, told the Militant that since the lockout ended the pace of work is heavy because ATI refuses to hire enough workers. “A lot of people are working 12 to 16-hour days, seven days a week.”
“We miss being on the picket line,” she said.
Coming out of the conference the party plans to field teams of campaigners across the country in small towns and large cities. To volunteer to help out, contact SWP branches in your area (see list on page 8).
Nearly 1,700 ‘Militant’ readers
The international drive to win 1,550 Militant readers, which was extended one week, has gone over the top, with 1,686 subscriptions! The Militant Fighting Fund has ended, and to allow time for contributions to be mailed in, we will post the final chart in the next issue. More than $105,000 has arrived so far.
“The Militant is essential for understanding what’s happening in the world from a working-class perspective,” Jacques Fontaine, vice president of Public Service Alliance of Canada Local 10333 at Montreal’s Vieux-Port tourist attraction, told the paper. The 350 union members are fighting for $15 an hour. “I’m happy to have discovered this paper and to realize I’m not alone in the struggle for social progress. To the contrary, I realize now that I’m part of a growing movement.”
He renewed his subscription and bought new subs for relatives in Montreal and Manitoba.
Related articles:
Spring subscription drive
April 2 - May 24 (Final)
Active Workers Conference
Socialist Workers Party campaigns among Minnesota workers, farmers
Socialist Workers Party candidate backs strike at Washington college
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