MIAMI — Kicking off her presidential campaign tour here May 1, Socialist Workers Party candidate Rachele Fruit joined 150 UNITE HERE hotel, airport food service and airline catering workers and their supporters in a rally at the downtown Stephen P. Clark Government Center. Along with UNITE HERE hotel workers demonstrating across North America the same day, they were demanding higher wages, more staffing and better working conditions. Fruit is a member of UNITE HERE Local 355 in Miami.
She ran into Elizabeth George, one of her co-workers. “I’m so happy to see you! How’s the campaign going?” George asked her. “I took the day off because I had to be here today. Keep up the good work.”
“We are all in this together,” airport concession worker Laticha Mentor said, adding she was interested in learning more about Fruit’s campaign.
Sandy Evans, who works at the Hilton, said this was her first union action. “I’m glad I came and I brought my children. My aunt said I had to join the union, or you’re alone to face what they throw at you.”
She was happy to hear from Fruit about the United Auto Workers union recognition victory at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and also was pleased to see Fruit running for president.
On May 4 Fruit received a warm welcome as she spoke with dockworkers at the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1416 hiring hall. SWP members regularly campaign there.
Many on their way into work bought a copy of the Militant. Others who recognized Fruit from earlier visits came by to say hello and meet her. As one worker looked at the campaign literature table and its sign reading, “BACK UNITE HERE contract fights. FOR a Labor Party. FIGHT Jew-Hatred,” he smiled and said, “Shalom.”
Union fights give workers confidence
Longshoremen Richard Canty and Derrick Collie stopped to talk with Fruit. She explained workers need to break from the bosses’ parties and form our own party, a labor party, that could draw in millions of working people to fight for our own class interests and for political power. “That sounds like a big project,” Canty said.
“A labor party will grow out of our struggles, as we build and transform the unions,” she said. “Efforts like the Chattanooga vote for the United Auto Workers give people confidence in union power.”
Fruit explained the SWP isn’t a “third party,” like the Greens or Libertarians, that offers slightly different proposals to defend the interests of the ruling rich. It’s a working-class party. Backing the SWP today is a way for workers to register their support for building a labor party.
After talking with Fruit, workers got two books — The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward and The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class — and a Militant subscription.
The next day Fruit and SWP campaigners set up a table at the Little Haiti Book Festival. This annual event attracts writers and artists who have works on display in English, French and Creole. Hundreds from the community turn out.
The table featured literature on Fruit’s campaign and books from Pathfinder Press by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries. They described the crucial example of the Cuban Revolution, the revolution led by Maurice Bishop in Grenada, and the deepening world disorder today as the crisis of capitalism continues to unfold, driving up a spike in Jew-hatred and pushing toward more wars. Participants got six Militant subscriptions and over a dozen Pathfinder titles.
Fruit was able to speak from the stage at the fair, with Creole translation.
“None of the social and economic problems we suffer from can be solved under imperialism,” she said. “Working people must organize independently of the Democrats and Republicans and all the other capitalist candidates.
“We need to join with all working people in our own fight for political power — in the U.S., in Haiti, the Middle East and elsewhere. We have common class interests and can unite to build a socialist world.”