Socialist Workers Party candidates and their supporters are finding wide interest in a working-class road forward as they campaign for Rachele Fruit, the party’s candidate for U.S. president. They are taking the party’s campaign and program to workers on their doorsteps, on union picket lines and to other union and political events, asking those attracted to its political program to sign up as campaign endorsers.
The international campaign to win 1,350 subscribers for the Militant, to sell the same number of books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries, and to raise $165,000 for the Militant Fighting Fund has been extended one week — to May 14.
This will allow branches of the Socialist Workers Party in the U.S. and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K. to continue getting out widely and using the just-published book The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class by V.I. Lenin and other leaders of the communist movement. The extra week will also help all areas meet their goals for subscriptions and books.
Ved Dookhun, the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, joined the April 25 picket line of UNITE HERE Local 274 members in Philadelphia. They are on strike against Aramark, a giant “food service and facilities” conglomerate. The unionists work jobs at different South Philadelphia sports arenas, often only part time. Dookhun was there to show solidarity and to back their demand to get the same hourly rate across all the venues, hours that should all count toward getting health care and overtime pay.
Dookhun also told Aramark workers about the deteriorating conditions and schedules on the railroad that threaten the safety of workers and those who live near the tracks.
“We need to break from the capitalist Democratic and Republican parties and form a labor party based on the unions,” Dookhun, a rail worker, told strikers Lori Gibson and Makel Bevins. “This can be an important step on the road toward working people taking political power into our own hands. This is the only way we can open the door to ending exploitation and oppression once and for all,” he said.
A labor party would build solidarity with the strike, encouraging workers at other workplaces to walk the picket lines. It would be a tool to help workers recognize our common class interests against those of the employers and the parties that serve them and to see what we can accomplish when we stand up together.
The Socialist Workers Party and the Militant present “many interesting ideas,” Bevins said, as he subscribed.
In New Chicago, Indiana, SWP members met Anthony Garcia April 27. “Garcia was impressed with Dean Hazlewood’s explanation of why we need to support Israel as a refuge from Jew-hatred and pogroms and why Hamas needs to be destroyed,” Dan Fein told the Militant. Garcia purchased The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch.
“I want to learn more about socialism, and this book about fighting Jew-hatred seems like a good place to start,” Garcia said. “Socialism is the best way because it’s workers who do all the work.”
SWP campaigners joined a protest by some 150 flight attendants and their supporters at the American Airlines terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare airport April 18. For months flight attendants across the U.S. have been demonstrating, to demand wage raises to cover inflation, full pay for all the hours they work and for limits on the length of their shifts and on-call hours.
Campaigners sold five Militant subscriptions and four books there, including three copies of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch.
In Oakland, California, SWP campaigners set up a literature table April 27 near a Walmart, attracting interest from shoppers and workers at the store alike. “Natalie, a new member of the Service Employees International Union, was attracted by our labor solidarity signs,” campaigner Carole Lesnick told the Militant. “She purchased a one-year subscription and the new book.
“One person we met came the next day to our Militant Labor Forum on the fight against Jew-hatred,” Lesnick said. “He subscribed to the Militant and got three books, including The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward. He plans to join us campaigning at May Day activities here.”
To campaign for Rachele Fruit and other SWP and Communist League candidates, contact the campaign office nearest you. Contributions to the Militant Fighting Fund can be made out to the Militant and sent to 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor, New York, NY 10018, or online at themilitant.com.
