Build the SWP, the party workers need

The following statement was issued Nov. 9 by Alyson Kennedy, a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party who ran as the party’s candidate for U.S. president.

The 2016 election campaign was a victory for the Socialist Workers Party. Thousands of workers across the country today know more about the party and its program. Party members and supporters gained an unprecedented hearing going door to door in cities and small towns, from coal miners in West Virginia to farmworkers in California, discussing a working-class perspective in face of the historic crisis of the capitalist system we’re living through. And we continue to do so today, tomorrow and thereafter.

Donald Trump and the other Republicans and Democrats elected yesterday become the managing committee entrusted by the propertied ruling families to run U.S. capitalism’s political affairs. Today that means attacks on workers’ wages, working conditions and political rights, and using Washington’s military to defend U.S. imperialist interests, at the expense of workers’ lives here and around the world.

The SWP explains above all why the capitalist rulers — including all the politicians who serve them in the Democratic and Republican parties alike — increasingly fear working people. They have no way out of the crisis of their system except to deepen their attacks on us. They fear that their offensive against our class will lead us to the political road, and the sense of self-worth gained through struggle and human solidarity, to take power out of their hands.

The Socialist Workers Party discusses why the working class needs to unite in defense of its own interests, and not fall into the trap of looking to the bosses and their parties. What a contrast to the bourgeois candidates! Hillary Clinton contemptuously called workers who refuse to vote for her “deplorables.” Donald Trump demagogically tries to turn us against each other, targeting Mexicans, Muslims and women.

We point to what our class is capable of, including the example set by workers and farmers in Cuba. They’ve shown in practice that we can overcome the divisions the rulers sow among us, that we can make a socialist revolution and establish a government that acts in our interests, extending solidarity to fellow workers around the world. That’s why Washington never stops searching for a way to overturn the Cuban Revolution, and why the SWP has never stopped defending it and demanding an end to the U.S. embargo.

The outcome of yesterday’s vote changes nothing for the working class and the challenges we face. The Socialist Workers Party will keep building the party workers need. I invite you to join us.

Related articles:
Socialist Workers take party to working class
SWP deepens door-to-door discussions with workers
Election reflects effects on workers of capitalist crisis
‘NY Times’ asks SWP supporters to vote for Clinton
SWP campaign fund over the top!

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