The Socialist Workers Party and Communist Leagues in Canada, Australia and the U.K. are campaigning to explain why Israel must be defended as a refuge for Jews and why the pogroms Hamas launched on Israeli citizens must be exposed and fought. On workers’ doorsteps, at demonstrations, picket lines and through SWP election campaigns and Militant Labor Forums, party members are discussing why the fight by the working class to take power offers the only road forward.
“We make no concessions to Jew-hatred. This is a life and death question for the world working class,” Lisa Potash, SWP candidate for U.S. Congress, told participants at an Oct. 8 Militant Labor Forum in Atlanta. “The only answer is to build a revolutionary proletarian leadership here and around the world.”
SWP members presented that course in Times Square, in New York, the site of two demonstrations held simultaneously Oct. 8, one for defense of Israel’s right to exist and one a celebration of Hamas’ terror attack.
The New York Jewish Week reported that “some in attendance said they supported socialism but opposed Hamas’ attack on Israelis and had come to make sure their perspectives were represented.” It quoted Lea Sherman, SWP candidate for New Jersey’s General Assembly, saying, “Can we ever condone civilian targets? Never. Socialists are opposed to antisemitism and Jew-hatred. This has nothing to do with socialism.”
Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Philadelphia City Council, and party member Ved Dookhun went to Macungie, Pennsylvania, Oct. 11 to bring solidarity to striking UAW Local 773 members. The workers had walked out a day earlier, as part of a strike by 4,000 Mack Truck workers across the U.S.
Striker Julian Horner was interested in what the SWP members thought about the attack on Israel. “Israel has a right to exist as a place of refuge. Jew-hatred is on the rise,” Dookhun said. Horner agreed, “Defending all peoples national rights are important, anybody has a right to live somewhere without persecution.”
In West Chester, Ohio, SWP campaign supporters met Marie Scott, a retired nurse Oct. 11, while knocking on doors near the picket lines of UAW members striking the General Motors parts distribution center.
Scott invited the campaign supporters into her living room. “So what’s going on in Israel? It’s just horrible what I’ve seen so far,” she said. “Killing young people at a concert? It’s just senseless! Why are they doing this?”
SWP member Anthony Dutrow explained that “Hamas has a stated goal of destroying the Jews. How they conduct themselves is barbaric. Jew-hatred is used by the capitalist class as it looks for a scapegoat to blame for the crisis its system creates. The ruling class stokes divisions among the working class.”
“I know what you’re talking about,” Scott said. She signed up for a Militant subscription.
By the end of the second week of the eight-week international campaign to sell 1,350 Militant subscriptions and 1,350 books by SWP and other revolutionary leaders, 585 Militant subscriptions and 836, books were sold. Contributions toward the SWP annual party-building fund of $140,000 are beginning to come in.
After visiting the picket line at the GM parts distribution center in Burton, Michigan, Oct. 2, SWP campaigners knocked on doors in the nearby town of Davison to discuss the importance of solidarity with the strike and present the party’s program.
Tony Lane and Salm Kolis met Kirby Blankenship, a member of the United Auto Workers at a nearby GM truck assembly plant. “We’ve been giving it up, little bit by little bit, and a little more,” Blankenship said. He was hired in 1991 as a carpenter, but his job has been combined with five others since then. Workers at his plant “were disappointed that we didn’t go out in the first round” of the UAW strike. “When they need us to walk, we’ll be there.”
Blankenship was interested in the Militant’s coverage of what workers face in other parts of the world, from Iran to Ukraine. Lane explained that Vladimir Putin doesn’t represent working people in Russia, and described the opposition to the war that exists among workers, in spite of government repression.
Blankenship signed up for a subscription to the Militant and got a copy of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by SWP leaders Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark.
The Militant was welcomed at the Kaiser hospital workers’ picket line in San Leandro, California, Oct. 6. Striker Tinuoye Olasunkanmi, who works in Kaiser’s medical surgery department there, told SWP member Carole Lesnick that he had subscribed at the union’s Labor Day action. “All workers are agitating for the same cause in different forms,” he said. “The Militant says it right, loud and clear for people to hear.”
To join in campaigning, contact party branches.
