NEW YORK — During a visit here May 24, Dennis Richter, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. vice president, spoke with a dozen or more app-based bicycle food delivery workers — many from West African countries — about conditions faced by working people.
“Why are you speaking with us? We can’t even vote,” said one, who like many others in the group recently arrived in the U.S. “The most important thing workers can do today is organize ourselves, regardless of immigration status,” said Richter. “The labor movement needs to fight for amnesty for undocumented workers,” he added, “to overcome the divisions the bosses use to drive down the wages and safety of all workers.”
Richter described the contract fight being waged by flight attendants, who are demanding pay for the time they work boarding passengers, serving drinks in first class and everything else before the aircraft doors are closed. Thierno, a delivery worker from Guinea, said that sounded familiar. “We show up here every morning, and sometimes you don’t get a delivery until hours later, but we have to be here the whole day to make enough to live.”
Three of the delivery workers came to Richter’s citywide meeting the next day. There was further discussion there about how capitalist politicians scapegoat immigrant workers. Richter referred to anti-immigrant remarks made by former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally of several thousand in the Bronx. “I ask people: Are immigrant workers driving up inflation? Causing the rents to go up? Are they the reason why young people can’t start a family?” Richter said.
“No, those problems, which affect all working people, are caused by the capitalist system that Trump, Biden, Kennedy and all other big-business politicians are hell-bent to uphold,” Richter said. He pointed to the need for working people and the unions to break with the capitalist parties and advance demands that strengthen the unity of the working class. The fight for jobs and wages we can live on is crucial for that, he said.
Former Black Panther member Tarik Haskins endorsed the SWP national ticket at the meeting. “Rachele Fruit of the Socialist Workers Party should be the people’s choice for president. She truly represents the forward advance for the working class and for all humanity,” he wrote along with his endorser card.