Vol. 80/No. 28 August 1, 2016
(front page)
‘Join us,’ says Socialist Workers Party candidate
“No matter who is elected Nov. 8, the ruling rich will continue to try to make working people pay for the crisis of capitalism,” said Hart at a press conference outside Burlington City Hall that morning. “A deeper economic, moral and political catastrophe is coming, more wars in more countries,” until the working class is able to replace their rule, he said.
Hart was joined by Jacob Perasso, a rail worker who is the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in New York and one of the organizers of a team of supporters going door to door across Vermont. In the course of campaigning for the party, more than 1,800 people signed to put the SWP ticket on the ballot.
Some people they met joined in. Perasso and other supporters knocked on Yam Tiwani’s door in Winooski. He got a subscription to the Militant, and then took them down to the nearby soap plant where he works to meet some of his co-workers on their break.
“In Vermont, the laws are stacked against working-class parties,” Perasso told the press. “It’s simply not credible that so many of the workers we’ve talked to in their homes and on their doorsteps are not being counted as valid,” referring to the rejection of many signatures by town clerks across the state.
“Of the 789 signatures submitted to nine clerks, they have validated 349, or 44 percent,” Attorney Paul Gillies, representing the SWP, wrote to Vermont Secretary of State James Condos July 14. “This number doesn’t make sense on the doorstep of peoples’ homes and apartments.”
“I want to represent the people who signed the petitions for the Socialist Workers Party,” Dorothy Coe de Hernandez, a retired teacher, told the press. “Any party that gets 1,800 signatures should be put on the ballot. This upsets me!”
When Hart, Perasso, Coe and other supporters got in line to hand in their petitions, with the press in tow, Jared Carter, a professor at the Vermont Law School waiting to pay some taxes, asked what was going on.
“If the signatures of a bunch of people who signed your petition are being rejected, that’s terrible,” Carter told them. “That means they’re being disenfranchised. But the right to vote for who you want is fundamental to the Bill of Rights.”
The Burlington Free Press covered the campaign in a July 18 article headlined, “Socialist Workers Party seeks new recruits in Vermont.” Vermont Public Radio also reported on the party’s news conference.
After filing their petitions, supporters went back to campaigning across the state.
In addition to meeting a number of workers who want to get involved in future party campaigning in Vermont, over the last month supporters sold 216 copies of Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Pathfinder Press’ new book by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes, and 127 subscriptions to the Militant.
Another round of campaigning in Vermont is being planned in coming weeks, including a return visit to the soap plant, as the SWP collects their petitions from town clerks to present to the Secretary of State before the Aug. 1 deadline.
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Related articles:
Workers need own party, independent of the bosses
‘Capitalist crisis is going to get worse’
SWP tells workers, ‘Our party is your party’
Conference presents road forward in face of irresolvable crisis of world capitalism
Join the Socialist Workers Party campaigning
Are they rich because they’re smart?
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