NEW YORK — At a spirited meeting here Feb. 23, the Socialist Workers Party launched its campaign for mayor, announcing Paul Mailhot as its candidate. Mailhot is the organizer of the SWP’s New York City branch.
The launching capped a week in which Mailhot and campaign supporters joined activities and presented the party’s program to postal workers rallying for a decent contract, visitors of the Anne Frank exhibition of the Holocaust at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan, and to hundreds at a rally to demand Moscow get out of Ukraine and in defense of its national sovereignty.
“All parties try to attract workers to vote for their candidates during election times,” Mailhot said at the campaign launch, “but none except for the Socialist Workers Party present the class-versus-class character of all politics and the place of the working class in determining the future for humanity.”
The Socialist Workers Party “has an unbroken record over the past 75 years of putting forward candidates for U.S. president and other offices who provide a voice, the only voice, in the interests of working people,” he said.
The SWP will be running candidates in a number of municipal elections this year, including Atlanta; Cincinnati; Fort Worth, Texas; Los Angeles; Miami; Minneapolis; Oakland, California; and now in New York. And in New Jersey the party is running Joanne Kuniansky for governor.
The problems working people face today — from the twin scourges of unemployment and high prices, to Jew-hatred and pogroms like that carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel, to racist discrimination, to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, to continuing assaults on constitutional protections — none can be explained, Mailhot said, by pointing to “bad” policies of the government, or particularly greedy capitalist owners.
“The mounting attacks on the working class and exploited producers by the bosses and their state and the growing threat of war are the result of the unraveling of the world order that emerged out of World War II that has been dominated by the imperialist victors, particularly the United States,” he said.
This involves “sharpening conflicts among the major imperialist and capitalist powers, their drive to secure sources of raw materials and markets, and trade disputes that will eventually end in military conflicts. These are the roots of assaults on living and job conditions of working people, and of imperialism’s march toward a third world war.
“The capitalist rulers have only one solution to the crisis of their profit system, to shift its burdens onto the backs of working people,” said Mailhot.
Need for a party of labor
Millions of workers, and the unions they are part of, are crippled by the illusion that social progress can be made through the parties of the enemy class. Democrats and Republicans, whatever differences in approach, have the same goals — how best to defend the imperialist system and the profit-making of the capitalist rulers. The SWP says workers need to break with the bosses’ parties and form their own, a party of labor, to chart a course to take political power.
Mailhot urged participants to extend support to nurses at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn who have voted to strike March 1. The socialist candidate explained that the biggest issues involved in the nurses’ fight are the increased workload, and schedules that stretch out the workday.
The nurses union has documented 8,000 cases of short staffing in the past 36 months. Each is a violation of nurse-to-patient ratios set by state law and by the union contract with the hospital.
The socialist candidate pointed to other examples of unions facing the need to fight on a political level. “There are an increasing number of workers who can’t strike legally,” Mailhot said. He joined a rally Feb. 16 in solidarity with the National Association of Letter Carriers, whose members have been locked in a nearly two-year-long battle for a contract. The postal workers fight is weakened by a federal law barring them from striking.
“The experiences of organizing and using our unions show us that the working class needs its own voice, a party of labor,” Mailhot said. “All of the class struggle questions working people are confronting are political questions. This includes the fight for amnesty for undocumented workers, an increasingly large part of the U.S. working class.”
NY politics reflect world politics
The SWP mayoral campaign issued a statement backing the mobilization of Jewish residents of Borough Park in Brooklyn Feb. 18, to take on a violent attack by pro-Hamas demonstrators.
These thugs called on their backers to “Flood Borough Park, to protest stolen land,” echoing the name Hamas gave to their Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom — Al-Aqsa Flood. “When Hamas supporters chant ‘Settlers go back home!’ and ‘Palestine is ours,’ they mean ‘Jews out of Brooklyn’ and ‘Jews out of Israel,’” read the SWP statement.
Borough Park is home to tens of thousands of Jewish families. Hundreds from the community responded to counter the pro-Hamas threat.
“Trump’s pronouncements about Moscow’s war against Ukraine make clear, if you had any doubt, the world’s strongest imperialist power is acting solely in its own interest,” said Mailhot, referring to President Trump’s demands for exclusive rights to a large part of the mineral wealth of Ukraine as the price for past aid from Washington. “It shows clearly the Ukrainian people can’t build their defense by relying on U.S. or European imperialist powers.”
The strongest ally for the Ukrainian people is working people in Russia, Mailhot told participants at a Feb. 24 rally of over 500 in Times Square. The fierce determination of Ukrainian working people to defend their sovereignty combined with worldwide support are key for victory.
At protests across the country, SWP candidates supported Ukrainian sovereignty and demanded U.S. troops and nuclear weapons out of Europe, and an end to U.S. sanctions on Russia, which fall hardest on working people in Russia.
“The working class is the only force that wants to — and can — open a totally different future for humanity,” Mailhot said at the campaign event. He pointed to the example of the October 1917 revolution in Russia led by V.I. Lenin and the 1959 Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro, “which showed that working people with the proper leadership are capable of taking power and addressing the needs of humanity.”
Solidarity with union struggles is at the heart of the SWP campaign. But being part of and helping to lead union struggles is not enough, Mailhot said. “Building the Socialist Workers Party is essential. Workers have to take power, and create a new state based on solidarity and cooperation with the struggles of the toilers worldwide to truly make progress. That is what the Socialist Workers Party is built to do.”
Mailhot pledged to use the election campaign to put forward a fighting, working-class program to all audiences he is speaking to. Though the campaign is for mayor of New York, Mailhot says he will join in working-class struggles wherever they break out.
Mailhot urged the 35 people in attendance to endorse the campaign — “to help spread the word about what the Socialist Workers Party candidates stand for. Get friends and co-workers to subscribe to the Militant and help get it around to others. Help make the campaign a voice for working people in New York and beyond, and help build the Socialist Workers Party!”
