NASHVILLE, Tenn. — “I don’t believe in the other candidates,” Lycinda Richards, a disabled worker living in Johnson City, told Socialist Workers Party campaigners Arrin Hawkins and Richard Hazboun when they knocked on her door May 18. Hawkins and Hazboun were part of a statewide effort to get signatures and presidential electors to put Rachele Fruit, the SWP candidate for president, and her running mate, Dennis Richter, on the Tennessee ballot in the November election.
“The Socialist Workers Party says that workers need to break with the bosses’ parties and form a labor party, based on the unions, to involve and defend the interests of all workers,” said Hawkins.
“Hold up!” Richards replied. Then she called for her daughter to come and sign the petition too. “There are no good candidates on either side,” Richards said. “No one is looking out for the working class. If you are down on your luck, the rich will tell you to go to a shelter. It’s workers who are the most generous. We look out for each other.”
Richards also got a subscription to the Militant so she could follow the campaign. Her daughter, Kristin Smith, signed Fruit’s petition and picked up The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class and Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle. Smith said she has a Jewish friend who lives in New Zealand now and she has followed the rise in antisemitic attacks there and in Australia.
Michael Powell also signed the petition in Johnson City. “I’ve been thinking about a party like this for awhile,” he told campaigner Betsy Farley. “I’m getting nowhere. I take five steps forward and 15 steps back. Look at the gas and food prices going up, and wages going down. The rich are making record profits, but a couple with good jobs can’t afford groceries.”
“More workers are fighting now, not only for higher wages but for safety and some measure of control over what happens on the shop floor,” Farley said, pointing to the recent victory in organizing the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga into the United Auto Workers. Powell agreed, explaining that when he worked at Texas Instruments in 1979 he had spoken up for getting organized. He was told, “If you mention the union again, you’re out the door.”
He bought an introductory subscription to the Militant and a copy of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.
Eighteen supporters of Fruit and the Socialist Workers Party who joined in the May 18-26 effort campaigned in Nashville and its surrounding towns, Chattanooga, Memphis, and Johnson City. They campaigned in store parking lots in the morning and knocked on doors in working-class neighborhoods in the afternoon.
Fruit joined the team in Memphis for several days, including meeting with union members of the Bakery Workers and United Auto Workers. (See “Fruit joins campaigning, fight for ballot status in Tennessee” in the June 10 Militant.)
In Chattanooga, several members of the UAW from the recently organized Volkswagen plant signed up to put Fruit on the ballot. This union victory came up in many discussions with workers across Tennessee. “The VW workers we met were jubilant about their victory,” campaigner Janice Lynn told the Militant.
SWP campaigners found serious interest among workers of all backgrounds in the idea that workers need their own party. They also found widespread support for Israel’s right to exist as a refuge against Jew-hatred and pogroms, and the importance of working people standing up to antisemitism.
While a few people, including both Trump and Biden supporters, said, “No way!” when they saw the word “socialist” on the campaign flyer, the main reaction was interest. Others were attracted to the party’s call for working people and the unions to defend constitutional freedoms, which are under concerted attack by the Democratic Party and Biden White House.
In nine days in Tennessee, socialist campaigners gathered 776 signatures, well over the legal requirement of 275, as well as the required 11 presidential electors. They sold 14 subscriptions to the Militant, 14 books by SWP and other revolutionary leaders, and 50 single copies of the Militant. They also signed up 12 new endorsers for Fruit’s campaign.
Arrin Hawkins from Washington, D.C., contributed to this article.