The Militant and the Socialist Workers Party are getting a hearing among workers and a welcome response in the labor movement.
The Central Labor Council of Memphis and West Tennessee showed the front page of the Feb. 5 Militant on their Facebook page Feb. 2, along with a reprint of the paper’s article on the life of Elmore Nickleberry, a participant in the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike against inhuman and discriminatory treatment.
“Great read! This is OUR Labor Black History,” the labor council wrote. The strike marked an important advance in the working-class movement that overturned Jim Crow segregation. The record of that struggle is invaluable for workers using unions today to combat the employers’ offensive.
R.B. from Cleveland wrote, “Thank you to the Militant for supporting American Airlines customer service agents and Communications Workers of America Local 4201 during our informational picket outside of Chicago O’Hare in 2023.” Workers fought for higher pay, job security, health benefits.
“We recently voted YES on a tentative agreement with American Airlines,” R.B. writes. “Thank you to the Militant for supporting the rights of working people! I will share the Militant with all my fellow workers at the airport.”
The 15,000 customer service agents won a new contract with immediate pay gains averaging 20%.
This kind of response bodes well for the reception the Socialist Workers Party 2024 campaign will get as its candidates campaign to present an independent working-class road forward.
Anti-worker Emergencies Act
A court ruling striking down the Canadian government’s use of the Emergencies Act to try to repress a protest by truckers in 2022 was the center of discussion when Katy LeRougetel, Communist League candidate for Parliament in the Montreal district of LaSalle-Emard-Verdun, visited Militant subscriber Deborah Green at her home in Oshawa, Ontario.
Hundreds of truckers had protested COVID mandates that threatened their jobs and livelihoods. The federal government mobilized 3,000 police and invoked the Emergencies Act to break up the action and arrest participants.
On Jan. 23 a federal judge ruled that the use of the act had violated fundamental political rights. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed the truckers threatened violence. Green had visited the truckers with her children to show her support. She said Trudeau’s claims were a lie. “There was no violence,” she told LeRougetel. “They took us into their trucks for soup.” “Workers are turning to our unions more and more to fight for wages and decent working conditions,” LeRougetel told Green. “We need the right to organize and speak freely more than ever.”
She described recent strikes by 600,000 Quebec public sector workers, fighting for wage increases to catch up with inflation and an end to intolerable working conditions. Green said she had worked as a personal support worker, looking after seven residents at a care home. “You just work like an assembly line,” she said. She signed up to renew her Militant subscription.
In London, Pamela Holmes, the Communist League’s candidate for the parliamentary constituency of Tottenham South, joined several hundred people in front of the BBC headquarters Feb. 4 to protest the media’s silence about the brutal treatment of women who were killed, raped or tortured in Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, as well as its treatment of women hostages.
“Communist League members and supporters were welcomed by many in the crowd,” Holmes told the Militant. “Participants took copies of our statement, ‘Fight Jew-hatred! Defend Israel’s right to exist! Support Ukrainian people’s fight for independence!’”
Eighteen copies of the Militant were picked up as well as the books The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation by Abram Leon, and Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity by Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, George Novack and SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters.
To join in campaigning for Socialist Workers Party or Communist League candidates, contact the SWP or CL branch nearest you.
