“The world working people face today is marked by deepening capitalist crises, which drive sharpening conflicts between allies and rivals alike, more wars and the threat of nuclear conflagration. That’s why the Socialist Workers Party campaign starts from the world,” Joanne Kuniansky, SWP candidate for New Jersey governor, told the Militant March 3.
Kuniansky announced a bold campaign across the state to introduce the party and its working-class program and to win ballot status for the Nov. 4 election.
“It’s necessary to change which class rules,” she said. “As workers acquire class-struggle experience we begin to see more clearly our own capacities to run society.
“The SWP is a working-class party involved in today’s struggles. It presents a realistic way forward, to lead millions to replace capitalist rule with a government of our own,” she said.
“Growing numbers of workers are repelled by the Democrats and Republicans. But without a complete break from these bosses’ parties, workers can make no progress. The SWP is the only party offering an independent working-class course,” Kuniansky said. “It explains that workers need to build a party of labor, based on the unions, to fight for our own class interests on all political questions at home and abroad.”
SWP campaigners in New Jersey are organizing to win 3,200 people to sign to put the SWP on the ballot before the June 10 filing deadline. That’s more than 50% over the 2,000 requirement. Party branches in New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere will help in this effort.
Gov. Philip Murphy and his fellow Democrats in the state government passed a bill raising the signature requirement from 800 to 2,000 earlier this year, a brazen attempt to put obstacles in the way of working-class candidates getting on the ballot.
But among workers, Kuniansky’s campaign is getting a serious hearing. Lamia Napil from Egypt was visiting her aunt who lives in Bayonne, New Jersey, when Kuniansky knocked on the door March 2. They told her about the devastating impact of rising prices. Kuniansky said high prices and other attacks workers face are a result of the sharpening competition between capitalist powers for markets and resources.
Rising threat of more wars
“We have to face the fact there will be more wars,” Napil said.
Kuniansky showed her the book, The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
“I need to know how the war between Israel and Hamas happened, this book looks like it will help,” Napil said after looking through the book and buying it.
“The SWP backs the fight of the Ukrainian people to defend the country’s sovereignty,” Kuniansky said. “The U.S. government acts everywhere to defend the interests of the capitalist rulers. The SWP calls for Washington to get its forces out of Europe.”
The U.S. government “is not for working people, it only cares about making money,” Napil noted.
Several of the workers who Kuniansky spoke with were interested in hearing about her visit to striking Teamsters at 10 Roads Express in Newark, to learn about their fight and offer solidarity.
At the same apartment building in Bayonne, Craig Honts, SWP candidate for lieutenant governor, spoke to Jesús Rocco who had just lost his job as a manager at discount retailer Big Lots. The bosses announced the closure of several stores after filing for bankruptcy last year.
“They put us all out on the street and we hardly got any severance pay,” Rocco said. “But the CEO walked away with plenty of money.”
“The SWP says the unions should lead a fight for a shorter workweek with no cut in pay to spread the available work around,” Honts said.
“The next job I get, I’ll probably be earning less,” Rocco added.
“Unemployment and high prices are a product of the worldwide crisis of capitalism,” Honts said. “Competition for jobs is built into this system. The SWP offers a way to unite working people so we can chart a course to take power into our own hands.” Rocco got a copy of the Militant to learn more about the SWP campaign.
SWP campaigner Nancy Boyasko spoke to a school custodian, originally from Colombia, in the same building, who said she had witnessed Israel being bombed on a trip there and was reading a book about survivors of the Nazi Holocaust.
“The SWP backs Israel’s fight to defeat and dismantle Hamas in order to prevent them from carrying out another Holocaust,” Boyasko said. “It is in the interests of all workers to fight against Jew-hatred.”
Boyasko showed her The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch. She purchased the Spanish and English editions, as well as the Spanish edition of Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women.
SWP defends Ukrainian sovereignty
In Atlanta, Susan LaMont, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor, joined more than 400 people at downtown Centennial Park Feb. 23 to demand an end to Russia’s three-year-long invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s important to answer the lies and propaganda of Russia,” Yuriy Soruka told LaMont. Soruka is a critical care nurse who has served in Ukraine several times as a volunteer medic.
“The fight to defeat Moscow’s invasion and Israel’s struggle to defeat Hamas should be supported by working people everywhere. Both show why working people need our own foreign policy,” LaMont said.
“Last year, when I went back to Ukraine with my family, we visited the Auschwitz museum in Poland,” Soruka said. “We can’t repeat the Holocaust, nor allow the destruction of Ukraine.”
Participants at the protest stopped by the SWP literature table, getting two Militant subscriptions and The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by party leaders Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark.
To join in campaigning for SWP candidates, contact the party branch nearest you.
