“No, they’re not rich because they’re smart,” Montague Wheeler, a laborer for the city of Fort Worth, Texas, told Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor, on his doorstep in the Village Creek neighborhood March 23. Kennedy had just shown him the book Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning Under Capitalism by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes.
“The capitalist class gets their immense profits from exploiting our labor,” Kennedy said.
“Yes, without the work we do they wouldn’t be rich,” Wheeler agreed.
Socialist Workers Party candidates across the country explain that to chart a course forward working people need to start with the deepening effects of today’s crisis of the imperialist world order.
The deteriorating conditions workers face today, Kennedy said, “confront working people throughout the world.”
She said the trade conflicts unfolding worldwide show the sharpening rivalry between the capitalist powers. “The rulers are heading toward another world war and the increasingly likely use of nuclear weapons. The SWP says working people need to take power into our own hands to prevent the destruction of humanity.”
Wheeler decided to get the book, as well as Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, also by Barnes, and a subscription to the Militant.
The books are two of several titles on special offer (see list on page 6) throughout the eight-week campaign launched by the SWP and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K. Their goal is to win 1,300 people to subscribe to the Militant, get out the same number of titles on revolutionary working-class politics, and to raise $165,000 for the Militant Fighting Fund. The campaign runs from March 22 to May 20.
The effort will help advance the SWP’s efforts to use its candidates and their campaigns to expand the party’s reach.
At the same time, the SWP will be carrying out a concerted effort to gather 3,200 signatures to put Joanne Kuniansky on the ballot for governor of New Jersey. And the Communist Leagues in Canada and Australia will be campaigning to get their candidates on the ballot as well.
Workers discover our capacities
Tony Lane, the SWP’s candidate for mayor of Pittsburgh, discussed a road to unify working people March 22 with Debra Paez, a stay-at-home mom. Paez told Lane she remembered her school classes being canceled in 2006 when millions of workers took to the streets across the U.S. on May Day to defend the rights of immigrants.
What happened in 2006 is an example, Lane said. “Workers need to stick together. We can’t rely on the bosses’ Democratic and Republican parties. The SWP says there needs to be an amnesty for all immigrants in the U.S. without papers. That can unify the working class and strengthen our unions.”
“I like that you’re running candidates,” Paez said, as she subscribed to the Militant.
Many workers the party meets are angry about the growing difficulties workers face trying to raise a family. Saida, a child care worker in Minneapolis, told Kevin Dwire, the SWP candidate for mayor, that she has four kids and child care is too expensive. Dwire said the unions need to take on the fight for affordable child care, one part of the broader fight the working class must lead against women’s oppression and capitalist exploitation. She said she wanted to learn more and got a subscription.
Political questions are class questions
Eric Simpson, the party’s candidate for mayor of Oakland, California, discussed the party’s program and activity with a retired postal worker on her doorstep there March 22. She told Simpson she’d already decided to vote for another candidate, but discussed with him the economic and social crisis workers face today. She said her father had told her, “Always vote for the lesser evil.”
She asked Simpson if he thought he could win. “Unless workers break from the bosses’ Democratic and Republican parties, we’re guaranteed to lose,” he said. But workers make progress when we recognize “every political question we face is a class question.”
She said she thought he used too much rhetoric, but took two issues of the Militant to see if she wanted to subscribe. The next day she met SWP campaign supporters at a rally organized by the American Postal Workers Union in San Francisco. She contributed $5 for the papers she had gotten.
SWP candidates are also taking advantage of the openings to present the party’s program and course at candidates debates and in the media.
“The bosses’ attacks on working people — on our wages and working conditions, the high prices, unemployment and the decay in the cities — are rooted in the crisis of the capitalist system,” Simpson said in an interview with KQED, the Bay Area National Public Radio affiliate, posted on its candidate guide website.
Simpson told KQED, “When workers begin to build movements based on solidarity, we see the truth — that we are the force that can solve society’s problems, not victims or passive recipients of charity. We are the solution.
“The Socialist Workers Party that I have been a long-time member of is part of building a working-class movement that will grow to millions and take power in the U.S.,” Simpson said. “A movement that stands in solidarity with working people in other countries. The two great revolutions in the 20th century — the Russian Revolution and the Cuban Revolution — showed that with leadership the working majority can take power.”
To learn more about the SWP and to join campaigning for its candidates, contact the party branch nearest you. You can contribute to the Militant Fighting Fund at www.themilitant.com.
Joel Britton and Maggie Trowe in Oakland, Vincent Auger in Pittsburgh and Gabrielle Prosser in Minneapolis contributed to this article.
