Supporters of the Socialist Workers Party’s 2025 campaigns are discussing with fellow workers on their doorsteps, on strike picket lines and elsewhere what we can do to defend ourselves from the impact of the unfolding capitalist crisis.
One important question on workers’ minds is immigration. In northeastern Minneapolis, SWP campaigners Mary Martin and Tyler Phorn-Hurtgen met caregiver Christine White Feb. 2. Phorn-Hurtgen told White that a demonstration of hundreds for immigrant rights was held in the city the day before.
“I was just talking to my friend about immigration and the fear the government is spreading. It’s no good,” White said. “Working-class people are trying to survive and we care about this. Rich people don’t seem to care.”
“The pace of immigration is determined by the ups and downs of the bosses’ demands for a layer of workers with second-class status they can super exploit,” Martin said. “A political fight by the labor movement is absolutely necessary to win an amnesty for all undocumented workers in the U.S., to unite working people and overcome the divisions bosses try to impose so all can join together in the class struggle.”
White signed up for a Militant subscription and said she would like to attend the Militant Labor Forum series in the city.
‘Build a party of labor’
Katy LeRougetel, Communist League candidate for the Canadian Parliament from the Dorval-Lachine-LaSalle riding in Montreal, and CL member Steve Penner campaigned Feb. 1 in the Bourassa riding where the CL’s Philippe Tessier is running.
They met laid-off Amazon driver Anmol Rana, one of thousands of Amazon workers who are losing their jobs as all seven Amazon distribution centers in Quebec are closing. He hopes to get another truck-driving job.
“It was like a blast to all the employees,” said Rana. “Amazon says you can move to Ottawa or Brampton or to the U.S., but people say, ‘We have families!’” Many workers think the job cuts are the bosses’ response to the successful unionizing drive at the Amazon warehouse in Laval, outside Montreal, which resulted in the first Amazon union certification in Canada.
“The government doesn’t support labor battles, it’s a government of the capitalists,” LeRougetel said. “More and more workers are turning to their unions to fight the effects of inflation and improve working conditions,” Penner added.
Rana told the CL campaigners he’d seen picket lines in front of Montreal’s Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel where 600 union members have been locked out or on strike since the end of November, fighting for a new contract.
“We have to rely on ourselves and build a party of labor to lead the fight for a government of workers,” LeRougetel said.
“But the elites control everything,” Rana replied. “It’s hard to change things.”
“It’s a challenge, but it’s not impossible,” LeRougetel said, pointing to Cuba’s socialist revolution. “Led by Fidel Castro, workers and farmers took power into their own hands and defended their revolution from Washington’s attempt to overthrow it.”
She pointed to photos of union struggles on the cover of the Pathfinder book The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward. “That’s what we can do together. Building solidarity with these fights is one of the goals of our election campaign.”
Rana signed to put Tessier on the ballot.
Campaign kicks off in Texas
Alyson Kennedy, SWP candidate for mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, joined in solidarity with strikers at Hertz Car Rental at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport Jan. 28. Forty-five members of Teamsters Local 745 have been on strike there since Jan. 18, fighting for a contract with higher wages.
Kennedy, a member of UNITE HERE Local 23 at LSG Sky Chefs at the airport, promised strikers she would let her co-workers know about their fight.
Supporters of her campaign, Dennis Richter and George Chalmers, got a good response at the Pilot truck stop north of Fort Worth Feb. 1. Trucker Printus Smith told Richter he’d been in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan but didn’t go back for a second tour because “I didn’t like what the U.S. military was doing.”
Smith bought a Militant subscription and The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class and three other books on revolutionary working-class politics. Richter had spoken with him about the history of Hamas, and how its origins came from forces with deep ties to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime during World War II.
A Salvadoran truck driver from McAllen, Carlos Guerro, got a copy of the Militant, telling Chalmers he agreed with him that “Israel has the right to defend itself and has spent many years fighting.” Chalmers told the Militant that showing the front-page photo in the paper of an antisemitic graffiti attack on a Jewish restaurant in Brooklyn had a powerful impact on the truckers he spoke to.
Altogether, truckers bought three subscriptions, three copies of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch, and one copy each of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us and Malcolm X, Black Liberation and the Road to Workers Power.
To find out more about the campaigns of the SWP and the Communist Leagues, contact the nearest party office.
