Fruit: ‘Working class needs its own party, a labor party!’
WASHINGTON — “The reality we are living through today is beyond the control of the capitalist powers. We face the threat of new wars and social disasters. They will take us to the brink and beyond,” Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president Rachele Fruit told a public meeting here May 18.
“But it is not outside the control of millions in the working class who, with communist leadership, are capable of taking power away from them. And the U.S. working class is the most important of all.”
“I’m glad to be here, right in the seat of power of the most powerful — and last — imperialist empire. I, and my running mate, Dennis Richter, a veteran of many industrial union struggles, are running on the program of socialist revolution.”
“Ours is an international program. This afternoon we participated in a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the forced deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population by the counterrevolutionary Soviet government of Joseph Stalin during World War II,” Fruit said. Stalin deported 200,000 men, women and children from their homeland on May 18, 1944.
“The national struggle of the Tatars continues today, with Crimea occupied by Moscow.
“When the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia unleashed its murderous war against Ukraine, the Socialist Workers Party called for the defeat of Putin’s invading forces and the right of Ukraine to its sovereignty,” she said. “Just as the Bolsheviks ensured the right to self-determination to Ukraine and the other oppressed nations trapped within the former czarist empire.
“Both Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’ Oct. 7 pogrom against the people of Israel have huge stakes for the working class worldwide. The decisive and clear stand of the Socialist Workers Party in the fight against Jew-hatred, as well as the defense of Ukrainian independence, places the party on the front lines at a turning point in world politics.”
The meeting was chaired by James Harris, SWP candidate for Washington, D.C., Delegate to Congress.
‘Workers are in a mood to fight’
“Some 40,000 hotel workers, members of UNITE HERE, the union both James and I belong to, are standing up and fighting for increased staffing and pay hikes,” she said. “Workers are in a mood to fight, trying to regain some of what we have lost.
“Through union battles we learn there are no individual solutions. It is our collective action that counts.
“The profit-drive of the capitalist system itself will inevitably produce big struggles and fights,” Fruit said. “This, and the practice of solidarity on the picket line and beyond, changes us.
“What is needed is a political party to mobilize and unite working people, independent of the boss parties. At root, all the questions that face us are political questions.
“We call for a labor party based on the unions, which can organize the whole working class to fight together, a social movement in a struggle to replace capitalist political power with a workers’ government,” she said.
Fruit said that a labor party would demand a government-funded program of public works to create jobs and build things we need, from schools and hospitals to bridges and mass transit. “I explain everywhere there are 17,000 bridges like the Francis Scott Key Bridge, called ‘fracture critical,’ which means a break anywhere brings the whole thing down, that need to be rebuilt.”
The Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed when it was struck by a huge container ship that had lost power March 26. Six construction workers filling potholes there were killed.
“A labor party will have to stand up to all acts of Jew-hatred and support unions forming workers’ defense guards that will be needed to take on anti-labor, rightist and fascist forces.” The working class needs its own foreign policy, Fruit said.
There is no wing of the labor movement seeking to build a labor party today, but workers can register their support for this perspective by backing the Socialist Workers Party campaign.
Stand up against Jew-hatred
“Our campaign will stand up and defend the Jewish people. It was absolutely imperative to stand up to Hamas’ Oct. 7 pogrom, without hesitation. This was a test for every political current and party,” said Fruit.
She said the conflict in the Middle East was intensifying, with big stakes for working people worldwide. “Israel is no longer just dealing with Iran’s proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah and others. We are in a new situation after the first direct Iranian attack against Israeli territory April 13. They launched 320 missiles and drones,” she said.
“I issued a statement immediately after that attack, saying, ‘Israel has the absolute right to take all steps necessary to defend its existence as a refuge for Jews. The Socialist Workers Party calls on working people in the U.S. to condemn the Biden administration in Washington for trying to pressure Israel “to accept the win” and not respond.’
“At the same time, we oppose deepening sanctions against Iran proposed by Washington and other imperialist powers. Such measures hit working people there the hardest, who already face an economic crisis and inflation rate of over 50%,” she said.
“The most important obstacle to the expansionist course of the regime in Tehran is Iran’s working people — Persian, Kurdish, Azerbaijani, Arab, Baluchi. The class struggle in Iran is central to helping overcome the national divisions and uniting the toilers of the Middle East. We say only the working classes of Israel, Palestine, Iran and the whole region can find solutions in their common interests.”
A lively discussion followed Fruit’s presentation. A number of speakers commented on the economic and social crisis facing working people today.
“Conditions are worsening,” said Fruit. “Life expectancy is at a 25-year low. The birthrate in the U.S. is at the lowest rate recorded since the government began tracking it in the 1930s. The root causes are the squeeze on workers’ living standards and rising uncertainty about what the future holds amid today’s capitalist crisis.
“Working-class solidarity and acting on the growing consciousness that we are a class with a goal to take power is a fight worth fighting,” she said.
Others noted the growing drive toward war. “It has been over 30 years since the SWP described the U.S. rulers’ war in Iraq as the opening guns of World War III. That seems self-evident to millions of people today, as more wars to redivide the world and its resources loom. Washington is rearming, Germany and Japan too, and China is building island bases in the South China Sea — just a few examples.
“There is more danger than ever that some capitalist regime, under extreme pressure, will resort to the use of nuclear weapons,” Fruit said.
Glenn Forcey, a union hotel worker here, endorsed Fruit’s campaign, telling her, “What you are doing is great. Neither the Democrats or the Republicans are doing a thing for workers. We have to take matters into our own hands.”
Harris read a message from another new endorser, James Campbell, a member of SMART-TD Local 1933 in Virginia. “The fight for just and fair treatment of workers all around the world is not carried on just a single front,” he wrote. “I show my support for this campaign to help promote and spearhead a mighty javelin in the right direction.”
Fruit urged everyone present to endorse her campaign and to get involved.
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