Workers across Minnesota sign to put SWP on ballot
MINNEAPOLIS — Thousands of workers in Minnesota are learning about the Socialist Workers Party and its candidates, Rachele Fruit for U.S. president and Dennis Richter for vice president, as the party campaigns for ballot status here.
SWP campaigners are finding interest from workers who are trying to make sense of the crisis of capitalism and find ways to defend themselves. They’re interested in the party’s call for a break with the Democratic, Republican and other capitalist parties and the need for a party of labor. Campaign supporters are reaching out to go well over the 2,000 signatures required. As of July 30 some 1,512 people have signed up to put the SWP ticket on the ballot.
“Many Latinos support Trump because the economy was better when he was president,” farmworker José Merrieza told SWP campaigner Naomi Craine at a Walmart parking lot July 24.
“Whoever is in the White House has very little effect on the economy,” Craine said. “What the bosses call a ‘strong economy’ refers to their profit rates. It doesn’t mean things are getting better for workers. For us, the tendency is toward more exploitation, high prices and competition for jobs.
“Only a workers government can make the resources of society available for everyone. That’s what they did in Cuba when they took political power into their own hands,” Craine added.
“If a rich person gave up all his money to the poor, after some time he would end up rich again,” Merrieza said.
“The solution isn’t the redistribution of money,” Craine replied. “It’s ending the system of exploitation. We have to transform the organization of society, and only the working class can lead that.” Cuba’s socialist revolution shows that’s possible, she said. Merrieza bought a copy of the Spanish edition of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by SWP leaders Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark to learn more.
“Socialists opposed to Jew-hatred, I have to sign that,” one woman in Buffalo, northwest of Minneapolis, told SWP campaigners July 29. The party urges workers and unions to act against every move to slander, scapegoat or attack Jews. It defends Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for the Jewish people.
Four SWP campaigners spent July 25-26 on the Mesabi Iron Range, a 110-mile-long strip of northern Minnesota. The livelihood of tens of thousands there depends on the mining of taconite, a low-grade iron ore used to make steel.
“I inherited a hay farm, but like most farmers I couldn’t afford to keep it going,” Robert Ansell told SWP campaigner Ilona Gersh at a Walmart parking lot in Virginia. “The price of seed and equipment is too high. So I sold the farm and became a construction worker.
“I’m retired now. The idea of a labor party sounds good, but where does that leave retired and unemployed people?”
A party of labor would organize all working people, in or out of work, unionized or unorganized, to fight together, Gersh said. She pointed to the example set by the Minneapolis Teamsters during their historic strike in 1934. “The union recruited workers without jobs to an unemployed section and helped fight for public relief for them and to prevent trucking companies from using them as strikebreakers. The union organized a women’s auxiliary and reached out to farmers.” Ansell signed the petition and got a copy of the Militant.
In Pengilly, construction worker Del Halling signed and subscribed to the paper. “I’ve given up hope in the Democratic and Republican parties,” he said. “I don’t even vote anymore.”
“The Socialist Workers Party says you should vote for what you’re for, not who you’re against,” Gersh replied. “Working people need a party of labor that can help organize our class to fight for what we need, like cost-of-living adjustments in all contracts so when prices rise, wages go up automatically, and for a shorter workweek with no cut in pay to prevent layoffs. “But why is socialism the answer?” Halling asked.
“The working class creates the wealth of the world,” Gersh replied. “And our class is the only class that can run society with the interests of the majority. Working people thrive on solidarity and unity. The capitalist rulers thrive on exploiting us and creating divisions that weaken our ability to fight together. Workers need to fight for political power.”
“I wish I had run into you a lot earlier,” Halling said. He told Gersh he remembered the miners strike on the Iron Range in 1977. Gersh said she got hired at the Minntac mine there just after that fight. “Because of workers’ unity, they won a lot of their demands and were an inspiration to others. The strikers traveled around the country to win support and to give support to other workers fighting for unions, like the shipbuilders in Newport News, Virginia.”
Today, SWP campaigners have been building support for park workers in Minneapolis who recently won a tentative contract after a three-week strike.
Alongside collecting signatures to get on the ballot, SWP campaigners have also won 14 people to endorse the campaign, and sold 16 subscriptions to the Militant and 19 books by leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and other revolutionaries.
