Socialist Workers Party files for ballot in New Jersey

Militant/Janet Post

TRENTON, New Jersey — Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party candidate for vice president of the U.S., right, with attorney Lawrence Otter, center, and campaign supporter Richard Ariza, file petitions May 26 to put Hart and SWP presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy on the ballot in New Jersey. At back, elections department staff count the 1,450 signatures, well above the state requirement of 800.

They were acquired as campaigners knocked on doors in cities up and down the state introducing workers to the Socialist Workers Party, the party’s paper the Militant — selling 140 subscriptions to it — and books and pamphlets containing the program of the SWP. Some additional signatures were collected at picket lines of workers on strike against Verizon in Trenton, Jersey City, Newark, Hamilton and Nutley.

“My campaign supporters took advantage of this opportunity over the past month to discuss with workers across New Jersey the economic and political crisis that we are living through. It grinds on, with no end in sight,” Hart told the Militant after the filing.

Jacob Perasso, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in New York, and campaign supporters Janet Post and Cecilie Brown, who work together at a Philadelphia Walmart, also accompanied Hart in Trenton. “I feel that Alyson and Osborne are for the workers and for everything we need — and so we should support the campaign,” said Brown.

— NORTON SANDLER