UNION CITY, N.J. — Ten days into the fight to win ballot status for the Socialist Workers Party candidates in New Jersey — Joanne Kuniansky for governor and Craig Honts for lieutenant governor — campaigners have signed up 1,278 people to put the party on the ballot.
“That’s a sign of the interest in the party,” Kuniansky told the Militant April 15, “and a serious response to Gov. Philip Murphy’s attempt to restrict ballot access and deny working people the right to vote for the party of their choice.” Months earlier the governor signed a bill backed by all the Democrats in the legislature more than doubling the signature requirement to 2,000.
“Over the coming weeks we’ll push on to collect 3,200 signatures, well over the new requirement,” Kuniansky said. SWP campaigners have sold 46 subscriptions to the Militant and 44 books by SWP and other revolutionary working-class leaders during the ballot effort.
“One thing that’s notable is the high number of people picking up the Militant — 170 people have gotten single copies already,” she said. Several have taken handfuls of the campaign flyer or a petition to help spread the word.
“It’s no surprise that the party is winning such support and finding interest in its working-class program,” she added. “Millions sense the world is becoming more dangerous and that neither the Democrats nor Republicans have any solution to the problems workers face.
“All parties appeal to workers for support,” she said, “but only the SWP explains all political questions from a working-class point of view, whether that’s immigration, high prices, rising crime or U.S. military intervention around the world. Our appeal is for workers to get active with the SWP campaign, to help build the party the working class needs.”
Kuniansky met Dante Warren, a tugboat operator from south Texas who was visiting New Jersey while she was campaigning in Garfield April 12.
“Trade conflicts, like the one taking place today, can lead to shooting wars,” Kuniansky said. “The SWP is building a party to help lead the working class to take power.”
Warren pointed to the influence that the wealthy owners of big business, like Microsoft’s Bill Gates, have on government policies.
That same day, President Donald Trump’s administration announced it was pausing tariffs on smartphones and other electronic equipment manufactured in China. This shows that “Trump is just a puppet who takes his orders from the rich,” Warren said.
Both the Democrats and Republicans serve the ruling class, Kuniansky said, pointing out that Washington’s tariffs aren’t in workers’ interests and that we need to rely on ourselves to fight for the things that our class needs.
The SWP advances a fighting program for the unions to protect every worker’s right to a job and to fight the scourge of inflation. The campaign calls for a union-led fight for 30-hours work for 40-hours pay to spread the available work around, and for cost-of-living adjustments in all contracts and government benefits so that when prices rise, workers’ wages go up to match them.
The SWP also calls for a government-funded public works program to provide jobs at union-scale wages building things like child care centers, hospitals and schools working people need.
SWP candidates have championed these demands since the party ran its first presidential campaign in 1948.
Warren got a subscription to the Militant and a book by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes.
A road to unify working people
In East Orange, SWP campaigners Susan Anmuth and Vincent Auger spoke with Rendell Stott, a FedEx driver, on his doorstep.
“The two parties say they’ve got solutions but nothing changes,” Stott told them. Stott is part Dominican and is following the targeting of Haitian immigrants by the government there for deportation.
“I know most of them are just workers, but something needs to be done to figure out who are the gangsters,” he said.
“The government in the Dominican Republic looks after the interests of the ruling families, not working people,” Auger replied. “The bosses try to pit Haitian and Dominican workers against each other.”
“But there is still a problem,” Stott responded. “Some immigrants are involved in gangs and drug dealing.”
“Violence, gangs and drugs are products of the dog-eat-dog system that workers are exploited under. You’re right, this is a serious problem,” Auger said. “Stopping this requires workers uniting around our common class interests to fight for political power, not rallying behind attempts by capitalist governments to target fellow workers.”
Stott said he still wasn’t sure he agreed with the SWP on crime, but liked what he heard enough to make a contribution to the campaign and got a copy of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes. Stott encouraged the SWP campaigners to contact him again because he was interested in helping spread the word about what the party is doing.
Edwin Fruit in New Jersey contributed to this article.
