UNION CITY, N.J. — The Socialist Workers Party announced Feb. 17 that Rachele Fruit of Miami will be the SWP candidate for U.S. president and Margaret Trowe of Oakland, California, will be Fruit’s running mate for vice president.
The announcement by Socialist Workers National Campaign Director John Studer was made at a campaign meeting here for Joanne Kuniansky, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from New Jersey, and Lea Sherman, the party’s candidate for Congress. Fruit and Trowe introduced themselves. The next day they joined campaign teams discussing why workers need to break with the Democrats and Republicans, the twin parties of the capitalist rulers, and collecting signatures to put the New Jersey candidates on the ballot.
Fruit, a hotel worker and longtime trade unionist, joined the Socialist Workers Party in 1970 in Philadelphia. Her biography, as well as Trowe’s, is here.
As the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from Florida, Fruit spoke out last fall against the Tehran-backed Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel. Her campaign statement in defense of Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jewish people was distributed at a protest at the Miami Holocaust Memorial and was featured on the front page of the Militant. It was circulated by party members and supporters across the country, as well as members of the Communist Leagues in Canada, the U.K. and Australia. The statement was welcomed by working people protesting Hamas’ slaughter and the jump in acts of Jew-hatred after Oct. 7.
Trowe has joined in speaking out at city council and school board meetings across the San Francisco Bay Area in defense of Israel’s right to defend its existence. She opposed resolutions calling for Israel to stop fighting Hamas, explaining that would only open the door to more pogroms.
Trowe is a production worker in a candy manufacturing plant in San Leandro and a member of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 125. She joined the Socialist Workers Party in 1975 after meeting the party through struggles she was part of — against the Vietnam War, for Black rights, women’s emancipation and the Equal Rights Amendment.
The party leaders and cadres Fruit and Trowe got to know and work with came out of the labor battles of the 1930s, with political continuity leading back to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the subsequent fight against Stalinism, and in support for Cuba’s socialist revolution.
Fruit and Trowe will campaign across the U.S. and around the world, beginning a West Coast tour in Oakland March 2.
A watershed moment in history
“The SWP brings a working-class program and voice to an election dominated by the two big-business parties — the Democrats and Republicans — at a watershed moment in history,” Fruit told the Militant. “Working people live in a world of deepening capitalist disorder and escalating competition over profits, markets and political influence, as well as a deepening war drive gripping all the major rival capitalist powers.”
Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the Tehran-backed Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom have sharply intensified the march toward World War III by Washington and its rivals, whose opening guns were signaled by the U.S. rulers’ invasion of Iraq in 1991.
“The Socialist Workers candidates urge workers to organize and act to prevent the Democratic Party’s assault on freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution,” Trowe said. “The Democrats’ witch hunt against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — the attempt to throw him off the ballot, ruin his family and send him to prison — is a blow to political rights workers sorely need. Whoever is targeted today, it is working people who will be targeted tomorrow.”
“The capitalists’ profits come from exploiting wage labor. The wealthy minority holds state power by dividing the working majority,” Fruit said. “The SWP joins the fight for unity in the working class, for building and strengthening the trade union movement and labor solidarity, for opposing Washington’s wars, for a government-funded public-works program to provide jobs and put an end to divisions between employed and unemployed, and for demanding amnesty for immigrants living and working in the United States.”
Union solidarity is a central part of the SWP campaign. The candidates and their supporters back the 100,000 union flight attendants fighting for a contract today.
“The Teamsters who carried out ‘practice pickets’ to win a contract at UPS and the United Auto Workers who struck the Big Three last year inspired many workers,” Trowe said. “I’ve been building union solidarity for my brother and sister BCTGM workers on strike since last June against International Flavors and Fragrances in Memphis.”
Uptick in labor battles
“There is an uptick in labor battles today. With more hiring, workers feel more confident to fight,” Fruit said. “At the same time, continuing attacks by bosses seeking to boost their profits mean we need to step up labor’s response.
“The bosses and their government try to weaken or break the unions. One glaring example was the Biden administration and Congress forcing a contract down the throats of 115,000 railroad workers, who were ready to strike over short staffing, deadly unsafe conditions and no paid sick time. Many are looking forward to their next contract battle, which starts this fall.”
She underlined the importance of defending Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for the Jews and against Jew-hatred. “Working people of the entire region — in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza — need the political space to organize and unite in defense of their common working-class interests and a road to fight for workers power,” Fruit said.
“The fight against Jew-hatred is a life-and-death question for working people, especially here in the U.S., because in times of deep social crisis the ruling capitalist families will back fascist demagogues to organize despairing middle-class layers using Jew-hatred as their calling card. They do this to divert attention from the true source of the disaster they face — the capitalist rulers. They’ll seek to smash the working class and its organizations, the unions.
“This is why the ‘Jewish question’ is a key question for the working class worldwide,” Fruit said. “And this isn’t an epoch of fascism — it’s an epoch of world revolution.
“The SWP is running to say this is the only meaningful road forward, to build a party capable of leading working people in their tens of millions to take political power,” she said.
Fruit and Trowe will campaign across the U.S. from now through the November election. “We find more people than ever open to a revolutionary working-class program,” Fruit said. “We invite those who want to learn more about the SWP campaign to get a subscription to the Militant to follow it. Endorse the candidates, join campaign teams or invite the candidates to a union, church or house meeting. Contact the nearest SWP branch to get involved.”