Fruit: ‘Back striking Boeing workers! Build solidarity’
MIAMI — On a steamy morning here Sept. 15 Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate Rachele Fruit met workers at the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1416 hall to learn more about their fight for a new contract and introduce her campaign. Union members regularly come there to pick up their work orders and head to the docks a few blocks away.
Fruit is known to many of them from her years in the labor movement in Miami, as well as her presidential campaign. With their contract up Oct. 1, a prominent discussion among union members was the likelihood of a strike across the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
“This will be the first time I’m on strike with a union,” Deon Barner, a six-year ILA member, told Fruit. “I’m not sure how we can all prepare for what will come.”
“Nearly a half-million workers nationwide have been on strike in the past year,” Fruit replied. “When workers strike, you can really feel the impact of the working class on the economy, the power we have to change society. We make everything, including the profits the bosses get from our labor.
“And the government backs up the employers,” she said. “Private property is the reason we can’t afford a place to live. We have the power to change the whole system, top to bottom.”
“We’re never fully prepared for a strike,” Sacarius Ragin, a nine-year member of the union, told her. “The bills keep coming and it’s hard. But we need to strike. You never know when you’ll work. Some guys come here every day, but only get one day’s work a week. It’s like a gamble.”
“We do get some strike benefits,” Ragin said, “but they don’t last that long.”
Fruit pointed to a sign on her campaign table saying, “Solidarity with Boeing Machinists. Support ILA fight for a decent contract!” She said, “If you’re united and show strength and win support from other unions, the strike may not have to last that long.”
The issues facing longshoremen are wages and jobs, as companies seek to automate as much as they can. Fruit told them she gets the word out about their fight everywhere she goes.
The union members told the SWP campaigners where to find their picket lines come Oct. 1. About a half-dozen longshoremen put on SWP campaign stickers.
Later that day Fruit spoke at a public meeting at the SWP’s campaign headquarters here.
More unions are fighting today
“As conditions of life for the working class deteriorate, and wars escalate, millions of workers are being drawn into politics in a new and urgent way, looking for ways to fight for our survival,” she said. “That’s why more workers today are using unions to fight for higher pay and cost of living protection.”
Fruit said she met workers last month in the United Kingdom who were interested to learn about the Canadian rail strike that was taking place at the time.
“For the first time in 100 years, union workers at both of the two big railways in Canada — engineers, conductors, dispatchers and yardmasters — stopped work, some on strike and others locked out, despite every effort by the government to prevent them from fighting over crew scheduling, safety and fatigue.”
“When the trains stop the bosses start losing millions,” she said. “You can feel the power of the working class.”
Fruit described a meeting she spoke at in Manchester, England, hosted by the Communist League branch there. “A worker said that the aerospace factory where she works has a contract with Boeing and some workers were afraid they would lose work if there was a strike in the U.S.
“We had just been to see the statue of Abraham Lincoln in central Manchester. A plaque cited a pledge from textile workers in Lancashire to support the Union against slavery. Another plaque carried Lincoln’s letter of gratitude.” The workers backed the Union Army’s blockade of cotton exports from the southern slave states, despite many being thrown out of work. “This was a tremendous example of internationalism,” she said. “Solidarity is everything.”
“The Democratic and Republican Party politicians will not defend the livelihoods of working people, despite their rhetoric about ‘hard-working families,’” said Fruit. “They defend the capitalist class, and they make sure that the U.S. military is strong enough to defend their imperialist interests in the world.”
She said that the SWP stands up against the government’s frame-up and conviction of leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party and the UHURU movement. They were accused of being covert agents of the Russian government based purely on their political views. Eleven of the 13 prosecution witnesses were FBI agents.
Threat of conflict and war
Fruit described how the world capitalist economic crisis is bringing devastation and war to millions. The U.S. rulers seek to expand their economic, military and political control around the world, just like their competitors do — both their allies and enemies. No stable world capitalist order is possible that would make the world any more peaceful.
The fight over which class rules is the central question that matters for working people everywhere in the world, she said. And the U.S. working class is decisive in that fight.
“We call for a party of labor, based on the unions, that can organize the whole working class to fight together. It could expose and fight against every outrageous crime the rulers commit against us.
“A labor party can organize our class to fight for the things we need, but it’ll take a fight for workers power to win them. That’s the most important thing we have to learn from the Cuban Revolution.” Taking power is the way workers can begin to take our future into our own hands, she said, “to solve the national questions and oppression we face, and to open the road to women’s emancipation by full participation in society.”
During the discussion some participants raised the fight against Jew-hatred. “The SWP explains that Jew-hatred is a life-and-death question for the working class,” Fruit said. “It is linked to the survival of the capitalist class in its death agony, and they use it to facilitate their attempt to crush the working class.”
We unconditionally defend Israel, a capitalist country, as a refuge for Jews from anywhere in the world, she said. It is the only country that will fight, arms in hand, against the slaughter of Jews. “But Israel cannot end the problem.”
“The solution is tied to building a revolutionary working-class party of all nationalities in every country — including Israel — that works toward workers power. In the U.S. that’s what the Socialist Workers Party is.”
An SWP campaign endorser, St. Paul Louis, pointed to how the capitalists spend countless dollars for their own pet projects — like sending a billionaire into outer space — yet they refuse to build affordable housing or to satisfy other unmet essential human needs. “How can we stop them?” he asked.
“They must be removed from power,” Fruit replied. “This is a revolutionary perspective. It will take a disciplined movement of millions of working-class people determined to create a new world based on human solidarity.
“We ask everyone who agrees with this perspective to endorse the campaign and join in the effort.”
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