UNION CITY, N.J. — “Two SWP candidates file as independents,” the Hudson County View reported June 1. Joanne Kuniansky, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from New Jersey, and Lea Sherman, the party’s candidate for Congress, filed petitions May 31. They had more than double the signatures required to be placed on the New Jersey ballot.
Campaign supporters gathered a similar number of signatures for SWP presidential candidate Rachele Fruit. They will be filed later.
The View noted the party’s opposition to the conviction of Donald Trump on frame-up charges a day earlier. The SWP candidates, they wrote, say, “Overturn the guilty verdict. Whatever they do to Trump — a candidate of one of the bosses’ parties — the same and worse will be done to workers and our unions.”
Campaign supporters spoke to thousands of working people across the state about the party’s program as they collected signatures.
Rail worker Jesse Cancel and his partner, Deseree Savo, a pharmacist, signed up May 19 after talking to SWP member Terry Evans here. “We need a change in the president, someone for the working class,” Cancel said.
“The question in front of us is what workers can do together to fight what the bosses and their parties do to us,” Evans said. “That’s how we’ll begin to change the conditions we face.”
“But the government has got us divided, by religion, by race. If we were more united we could do more,” Cancel replied.
Evans pointed to today’s labor battles, where workers have come together to fight to end multitier wages, push back against family-crushing schedules and take control over working conditions.
“Look at the historic accomplishments of the working class in this country, where millions fought to uproot Jim Crow segregation,” he said. “That’s what our class is capable of doing when we fight.”
Employers “keep pushing us,” Cancel said. “Sooner or later there’ll be a rebellion.” He got a copy of the Militant to learn more about what fellow rail workers in Canada are doing in response to employer and government attacks there.
A retired postal worker and former shop steward here signed up to put Fruit and Kuniansky on the ballot. “What’s the SWP view on abortion? Can women’s rights ever be won?” she asked.
“Abortion should be decriminalized,” Evans replied. “The working-class road to women’s emancipation starts with fighting capitalism’s erosion of conditions that make family life possible, especially unemployment and the effects of soaring prices.” He showed her how The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward addresses these questions. She got a copy of the book along with a Militant subscription.
Sherone Thompson, a nurse, was happy to find SWP member Candace Wagner campaigning outside the Walmart in Kearney May 20. She told Wagner she got a campaign flyer a few weeks earlier and liked what she read. She bought a copy of the Militant and signed up to become an endorser of Rachele Fruit’s campaign.
The statewide effort wrapped up with a successful campaign meeting here May 25 featuring Dennis Richter, the SWP candidate for vice president. Participants contributed $1,168 to extend the reach of the campaign.