Rachele Fruit speaks in Pittsburgh, East Palestine
PITTSBURGH — “I’m very glad to be here in a region where the working class has been part of profound struggles,” Rachele Fruit, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for president, told a campaign meeting here April 23.
“I was fortunate to be able to speak with some of the fighters in East Palestine yesterday, fighters who are learning from experience what the ugly face of capitalism looks like,” she said. Fruit visited East Palestine, Ohio, as part of her two-day campaign tour in the Pittsburgh area.
“Just since I’ve been here, we’ve seen another example of the face of Jew-hatred,” she said, referring to a Pittsburgh home displaying an Israeli flag that was spray-painted “For blood and soil,” a Nazi slogan, on April 21. “Our campaign will, first and foremost, defend Jewish people, and explain the stakes in this battle for all working people.”
“The deepening world capitalist economic crisis is bringing devastation and war to millions,” she said. “The future of humanity depends on the U.S. working class taking power away from the capitalist rulers and starting down the road to make a socialist revolution. The fight over which class will rule is the central question that matters for working people everywhere in the world, but the U.S. working class is decisive in that fight.
“Today in the Middle East the U.S. rulers have deployed 45,000 troops across 10 countries. They have the interests of the ruling capitalist families to defend there, and the means to do it. In the last couple of decades they have expanded their presence in Asia and the Pacific, seeking to contain China’s growing influence and dominance.
“We oppose U.S. troops, bases, armaments in the Middle East, all of which help Washington prepare for wars that will never cease until the working class takes power.”
At the same time they prepare for new wars abroad, Fruit said, “the federal government is working to clean up the reputation of the FBI and expand the use of the government’s secret police here at home. This week Congress reauthorized its warrantless surveillance powers, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“The Democratic Party is leading the charge against our rights,” she said, “with its sights set on working people who are paying the price for the crisis of capitalism, who resist being told how to think and live, and for whom the Democrats have no solutions other than to try to criminalize them.
“In states where they’re the majority, the Republicans carry out their own attacks on political rights, including criminalization of women’s right to choose abortion, increased use of the death penalty and more.
“Today workers by the hundreds of thousands are fighting for contracts that confront the skyrocketing cost of food, shelter, fuel, medical care, child care and elder care, as well as the untenable, too often deadly, working conditions we face,” Fruit said.
‘We need a labor party’
“What the working class needs is our own political formation independent of the boss parties, a labor party based on the unions that unites the whole working class to fight together. It could expose and fight against every outrage, every crime the rulers commit against us. A labor party could explain that no worker has to die on the job if we fight and win workers control over safety and production.”
Fruit pointed to the falling birthrate in the U.S. — and in much of the capitalist world — a sign of the deepening social crisis. Facing this, “the government’s immigration policy is their labor policy. The bosses need workers to exploit. That’s where their profit comes from.
“At the same time, the bosses’ scapegoating of immigrants is used by the ruling class to divide and weaken us, to lower wages for all workers. The fight to unify our class is a life-and-death question for the working class. The Socialist Workers Party calls for amnesty for all immigrant workers in the U.S.
“Our continuity goes back to the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution in 1917. That was the first time the working class took political power and held it. The fight for workers power was reopened in the Americas with the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959. In both cases, they defied the most powerful forces on earth, and won.
“Against relentless attack from the U.S. rulers, the Cuban toilers have shown the world for 65 years how social relations can change, how human beings will change. And we fight like hell to defend it. As Raúl Castro said in January on the 65th anniversary of the revolution, ‘We have overcome our problems by fighting, and it has been worth it.’”
A lively discussion followed the talk. One participant asked if Fruit could say more about the situation facing Jews today. “The fight against Jew-hatred is an essential part of the working-class fight to take political power,” she said.
“We defend the right of oppressed nationalities — African Americans, Palestinians, Kurds, Jews and the wide variety of nationalities in China.”
Meeting participants enthusiastically contributed $1,000 to the SWP national campaign.
Fight in East Palestine
“How many smoking guns do you need?” Daren Gamble, a retired bricklayer and member of the Unity Council for the East Palestine Train Derailment, asked Fruit in her East Palestine visit April 22. He described the refusal of Norfolk Southern or federal authorities to admit their responsibility for the disaster brought down on working people in the wake of the February 2023 toxic train derailment there.
Jami Wallace, president of the Unity Council, told Fruit, “Nothing we need is getting done. They build a park instead of meeting people’s needs.” Fruit said, “The government and the company are doing everything in their power to cover up that they’re responsible for what working people here face. You’re asking the same people who are responsible for the situation to solve it. This can only be resolved by the working class.”
Gamble was impressed with what Fruit had to say. “Everyone deserves a chance in life. I’m with you guys,” he told her, signing up as an endorser of the SWP campaign.
Fruit also met Chris Albright, a residential gas pipeline worker, member of the Laborers union, and a leader of Justice for East Palestine Residents and Workers, a coalition fighting for the health care of area residents and for safer railroads. Albright hasn’t worked since shortly after the train derailment, when he developed congestive heart failure.
“We reach out and get one union involved, but we need to get all the unions together,” Albright said. “Safer railroads are needed or disasters like this are going to happen again in another town.”
“Unions are key to fighting for this,” Fruit agreed. “And we need to organize a labor party based on the unions, a party that will organize all workers to fight.” She pointed to the example of thousands of autoworkers who struck the Big Three auto bosses last year and the impact that had on autoworkers in the South, who were not unionized. “Workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama were told unionizing ‘is not the right thing to do.’ They responded by stepping up their organizing effort.”
The $600 million settlement Norfolk Southern agreed to has left residents feeling victimized again. After legal fees, the 100,000 area residents it covers would get less than $6,000 each.
Albright called it “a slap in the face. It might buy one pill of the medications I need.”
Gamble said the settlement “is a total crock. It won’t even pay the taxes for our relocation expenses. We’d be better off to fight to the bitter end and get nothing.”
“This is the way the capitalist system works,” Fruit said. “The answer is for working people to organize in our millions to take political power into our own hands.”