Richter: Trump conviction is blow to rights of working people

By Betsy Farley
June 17, 2024

CINCINNATI — “The conviction of Donald Trump was celebrated in huge headlines in the Dallas-Fort Worth newspapers and liberal media across the country,” Dennis Richter, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. vice president, told supporters at a June 1 campaign event here. “But this was no victory for working people — quite the opposite.”

Richter explained the New York “hush-money” trial, as well as the three additional indictments Trump faces, are nothing but an attempt by the Democratic Party to run him out of the elections and deny millions of workers the right to vote for the candidate of their choice.

“Rachele Fruit, the SWP candidate for U.S. president, and I say Trump’s conviction is an attack on the constitutional protections working people and the oppressed need, first and foremost. The fight to defend and extend these freedoms is at the center of the class struggle today.

“Millions of workers resist being told how to think and how to live,” Richter said. “We say the working class needs its own party, a labor party based on the unions, a party that can organize all working people.

“Tens of thousands of workers have been on the picket lines in recent years, winning some important gains, like in the United Auto Workers strike at the Big Three and others. Hotel workers in my union, UNITE HERE, just won contracts in Los Angeles with significant wage increases.

“Not every fight ends in a victory though,” Richter said, pointing to recent union battles at International Flavors and Fragrances in Memphis, Tennessee and Molson Coors in Fort Worth, Texas. Although workers at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, won a hard-fought battle with 73% voting for the UAW, the union lost its first vote for the union at Mercedes-Benz in Vance, Alabama. Richter urged solidarity and support for June 13 protests organized by the two flight attendants unions fighting for a contract.

“It will take organization, developing leadership and solidarity to go forward,” he said. “We can build a workers’ movement, a labor party of all working people, anyone who agrees we need to break with the capitalist parties. A labor party can fight for a government-financed public works program to create jobs for all who need them, building things workers need at union-scale wages. And we can fight for workers control of production and safety. A labor party can build a social movement regardless of language or nationality.”

Richter said that ultimately workers need to fight to take political power, “The question facing humanity on a worldwide basis is which class will rule.” Richter urged everyone to endorse the campaign of Rachele Fruit for president and join in campaigning. “There’s nothing more important you can do with your life today.”

A lively discussion followed Richter’s presentation and more than $500 was raised for the Socialist Workers Party campaign.