As part of campaigning across the country for Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president, SWP supporters have kicked off a three-week effort to put her, along with Margaret Trowe for vice president and Joanne Kuniansky, the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from New Jersey on that state’s ballot. They are collecting 1,700 signatures each for Fruit and Kuniansky, more than double the 800 required.
Lea Sherman, the party’s candidate for U.S. Congress from New Jersey, met Wilson Cruz, an Amazon truck driver, on his doorstep in North Bergen March 30. He told her she was lucky to catch him on a day off, given the amount of mandatory overtime on his job. He pointed to a Militant headline “Biden says the economy’s great, workers face a different reality.”
“I agree with that,” he said. After signing to put the SWP candidates on the ballot, he bought a subscription to the Militant and a copy of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by party leaders Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark and Puerto Rico: Independence Is a Necessity by Rafael Cancel Miranda.
Fruit’s campaign is at the center of the eight-week international campaign by the SWP and Communist Leagues in Canada, Australia and the U.K. to win 1,350 Militant readers, sell 1,350 books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries and raise $165,000 for the Militant Fighting Fund.
Ved Dookhun, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, met bakery worker Martha Marlen, a member of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union, on her doorstep in Philadelphia March 30.
Marlen, who works on the midnight shift six days a week, said she agreed with Fruit’s proposal that unions lead a fight for a shorter workweek with no cut in pay and for automatic cost-of-living increases so wages keep up with inflation.
“Working people need to break from the Democrats and Republicans, the capitalist parties that have never represented the interests of workers and farmers,” Dookhun said.
“Yes, just say it — the rich!” said Marlen. Her husband is an Uber driver and she appreciated hearing about the Feb. 14 one-day strike by Uber, Lyft and DoorDash drivers. “The drivers say the companies take 80% of their pay,” Dookhun said. “Well, it’s really more like 90%,” said Marlen, pointing to her husband’s earnings.
Marlen subscribed to the Militant and bought Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? by Barnes and The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us. She contributed to the Militant Fighting Fund.
SWP members Chris Hoeppner and Abby Tilsner went to Narberth, Pennsylvania, to give solidarity to Gladys Senderowitsch, an Israeli American and owner of Nana’s Kitchen, after “Free Gaza” was spray-painted on the side of her restaurant March 15. Senderowitsch organized a rally of 200 to protest the Jew-hating attack. She thanked Hoeppner and Tilsner for their visit.
A customer in the restaurant, overhearing the discussion, gave a $20 donation to the Militant Fighting Fund. The paper is financed entirely by workers who appreciate its role in building solidarity and advancing a road forward for the working class.
Later that week waiter Eli Shea got a subscription to the paper. “I really like the Militant’s view of the world, giving a class perspective,” Shea said, pointing to an article opposing efforts to silence author J.K. Rowling for her defense of women’s rights. He bought copies of 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 Mary-Alice Waters. Both are among the 15 titles on special during the spring campaign.
In New York, Eri Rodriguez, an owner-operator truck driver, told Sara Lobman, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from there, and party member Brian Williams that with ever-increasing tolls and the soon-to-be-implemented “congestion pricing,” he’ll be paying $36 a day for his tractor and trailer to enter parts of the city. “That’s another $720 a month on top of gas,” he said.
Rodriguez left his hospital job two years ago to drive a truck, thinking he’d make more money. “But that’s not the case,” he said. “If I do the math on my expenses I’d be doing as well to bag groceries in the supermarket.”
Rodriguez purchased a Militant subscription and said he was interested in hearing more about working-class struggles and efforts to build unions.
To join in campaigning for SWP and Communist League candidates, contact the office nearest you. Checks for the fund are payable to The Militant and can be sent to 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor, New York, NY 10018. Payments can also be made online at www.themilitant.com.