BOSSIER City, La. — Supporters of Rachele Fruit, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for president, and her running mate, Dennis Richter, campaigned from one end of Louisiana to the other July 16-23. Richter joined the campaign volunteers to bring what the candidates stand for to working people and to ask them to help put the only working-class alternative on the ballot.
Eight workers — one in each of Louisiana’s six congressional districts and two at-large — signed to serve as electors for Fruit and Richter. Their forms will be turned in to the secretary of state’s office.
Richter and SWP campaigners Josefina Otero and Alyson Kennedy joined a July 17 informational picket line of over 150 nurses, members of the National Nurses United union. Some 700 nurses at University Medical Center in New Orleans are fighting for their first contract since they voted to join the union by 82% in December.
“We are demanding safe patient care and safe staffing levels,” Kisha Montes, who has been a nurse at the hospital since 2008, told Richter. “I work in the psychiatric ward where there are two nurses and one technician for 50 patients.
“I like what you say about a labor party based on the unions,” she added.
Terry Mogilles, another nurse walking the picket line, signed up to be an elector. She told Richter she decided to do so after learning more about what the party stands for. “You support our fight for a contract and what you stand for will help mitigate health disparities.”
In Morgan City, Steve Warshell and Laura Anderson met several people who said they were voting for Trump, but agreed with what they heard about the SWP campaign. One retired offshore worker said he “supported the idea of workers uniting whether you are in a union or not.”
After hearing what Fruit and Richter’s campaign says, Maria Garcia Ortiz said, “You are doing something important,” and signed up as an elector in District 3. She donated $10 to the campaign and bought a copy of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.
In Houma, campaigners met Edward Kenny, an auto mechanic who was working on a truck in his driveway. He responded to the SWP campaign, saying, “You get tired of seeing the same old thing. It is time for a change.” He also signed up as an elector.
Campaigners drove to the northern part of the state, where they fanned out to towns surrounding Shreveport and signed up four more electors. In Bossier City, Christopher West, a truck driver who works for a company that lays concrete, said he wanted to be an elector. “We are being put in a box on who to choose in the elections,” he said, but the SWP deserves to be on the ballot.
The election forms have to signed in front of a notary, who certifies them. After reading the campaign flyer, one notary from West Monroe, William Stratton Jr., said, “I signed up as an elector in the 5th District because I’m tired of the limitations imposed by the two-party system. It’s time to empower the working class and ensure their voices are heard loud and clear.”
He bought a copy of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us and The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.