SWP candidates get hearing for working-class program
DELANO, Calif.— Norton Sandler, Socialist Workers Party candidate for California governor, launched his campaign as he joined several thousand farmworkers and other unionists fighting to defend the rights of immigrants at the “With These Hands” march and rally here March 31.
“This march points to the road that will bring workers together,” Sandler told participants he met. “It helps prepare us for the political struggles ahead, the fight to break from the bosses’ parties and chart a course forward to take power into our own hands, ending capitalist exploitation once and for all. That is what the Socialist Workers Party is fighting for.”
Sandler, a member of the party’s National Committee, will speak in Oakland April 6 and Los Angeles April 13. SWP candidates and trade unionists Laura Garza, a freight rail worker running for Los Angeles mayor, and Eric Simpson, a machine operator running for mayor of Oakland, came to the action on union buses.
The candidates and supporters handed out a statement, “Amnesty for immigrants! The road to unify the working class.”
“As the capitalist crisis deepens today,” the statement says, “more workers are asking how to unite and use the full strength of our class and our unions to stand up to the bosses’ assaults on wages and working conditions. The working class makes gains when we join together and fight, regardless of color, nationality, sex or legal status.
“What’s needed today is an amnesty for undocumented workers, removing the burden of fear, tearing down barriers to fighting side by side against the bosses and their government.”
During the 3-mile march one farmworker after another got a copy of the SWP flyer from this reporter, as I explained why the fight for an amnesty is a necessary step to unify working people so we can build together a powerful movement capable of ending the wars and social catastrophes in today’s crisis of the capitalist system.
Some 30 marchers bought subscriptions to the Militant, and a similar number picked up books by revolutionary working-class leaders. This gives an important boost to the eight-week international campaign to expand the paper’s readership.
The SWP, alongside the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K., are organizing to win 1,300 people to subscribe to the paper, get out the same number of books and raise $165,000 for the annual Militant Fighting Fund. The drive goes from March 22 to May 20.
The results of the first week’s campaigning appear in the chart.
Timothy Frankland, a member of the American Postal Workers Union in Minneapolis, values the Militant and recently renewed his subscription for two years.
Postal workers look to the ‘Militant’
“I read the Militant because it provides a weekly update on the struggles of the working class in America, Canada and the rest of the world,” he told SWP member Gabby Prosser. “It does an incredible job of linking those struggles to historical events. Attacks on the working class are not new, and it is great to get reminders of how working people have overcome those struggles in the past.”
At a postal workers rally in Los Angeles, one participant came over to the SWP literature table. She told Laura Garza and Bernie Senter, “Yes, the Militant, I need to get it again.” She had subscribed at another postal workers rally in nearby Pasadena last August, and said her mother reads the paper’s Spanish pages. She renewed her subscription and bought Teamster Rebellion, a firsthand account by Farrell Dobbs of the strikes and organizing drives that brought hundreds of thousands into the union in the 1930s.
In Montreal, Katy LeRougetel, one of the Communist League’s two candidates for Parliament, spoke with former postal worker Rita Nahabedian on her doorstep. Nahabedian worked in a pharmacy at the postal counter that was shut during a strike by postal workers in Canada last year. She told LeRougetel she was opposed to the government’s intervention to ban the strike.
Nahabedian also wanted to discuss the trade conflicts between Washington and Ottawa.
“Canada’s ruling rich are trying to line us up behind them in their trade war with the bosses in the U.S.,” LeRougetel said. “We say workers have common interests and a common enemy, the capitalists. We have to organize to fight for jobs and the other things we need — the same as workers in the U.S., China, and other countries.”
Nahabedian bought a subscription to the Militant.
Workers unity against the bosses
SWP member Lisa Rottach reports that she and Dean Hazlewood took part in a solidarity rally March 28 in East Chicago, Indiana, for the 70 United Steelworkers Local 1011-09 members fighting for a new contract with Safety-Kleen.
“Thanks for coming out today,” Noel Muniz, a mechanic and secretary of the local, told them. “Unity is how we will achieve our goals. The rich only care for the rich.”
“That’s true,” Rottach replied. “The capitalists worldwide organize to defend their interests. They have their governments, political parties, courts, armies and cops. My party says we must break with the Democrats and Republicans. The Socialist Workers Party is a party of working people, with an international working-class program.”
Muniz subscribed to the Militant, bought The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward and The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch and contributed to the Militant Fighting Fund.
To join the SWP campaign, contact the party branch nearest you. To contribute to the Militant Fighting Fund, send a check to the Militant at 307 W. 36th St., 13th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or donate online at www.themilitant.com.
