SOMERDALE, N.J. — “The Socialist Workers Party is in a fight to be on the ballot,” Joanne Kuniansky, SWP candidate for governor of New Jersey, told working people during two days of campaigning in the southern part of the state April 25-26. “Our party joins struggles by workers with a program pointing to the need for the working class to take political power into our own hands.”
As the Militant goes to press, 2,630 people have signed to put Kuniansky on the ballot, toward the SWP’s goal of 3,200. That’s well over the 2,000 needed after Gov. Philip Murphy and the Democratic Party-dominated legislature more than doubled the requirement earlier this year.
Kuniansky and campaign supporters visited the Jersey Kebab restaurant in Haddon Township to offer solidarity to Turkish owners Emine and Celal Emanet after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers raided the premises and arrested both of them Feb. 25. Celal was released with an ankle monitor and Emine was held for two weeks. More than 100 people rallied outside the restaurant March 1 to support them and protest the raid.
The Emanets came to the U.S. in 2008 on religious worker visas, then later applied for green cards. But that application has been in limbo since 2016.
“That’s wonderful! I so much appreciate you coming by!” Celal Emanet said, congratulating Kuniansky on her campaign. She told him the party demands an amnesty for workers in the U.S. without papers and gave him a Militant and a campaign flyer. Celal gave the campaigners some Turkish doughnuts and told them the family has another court hearing at the end of the month. A customer in the shop got a Militant subscription.
In the same neighborhood, Kuniansky met electrician Brian Lang and told him she had just met the Emanets. Lang said that with all that’s going on in the world he’d been “a bit down.” But when several of his neighbors joined the protest, “it really picked me up.”
Lang said he thinks “the system is broken” and was interested in learning more about the SWP and in joining an action celebrating international workers day May 1. He got a Militant subscription and the books The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward and Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women.
At a parking lot in Hamilton Township, Marissa Porfirio told Kuniansky that she didn’t support either the Democrats or Republicans, “but it does seem like more people get laid off when Republicans are elected.”
“Neither the Democrats nor Republicans support workers’ interests,” Kuniansky said. “There are no measures they can or will take that will solve the deepening economic crisis. As long as capitalism exists, the world is headed toward more crises and wars, including the possibility of a nuclear war.”
Fighting Jew-hatred a key question
Porfirio and Kuniansky discussed the need to defend Israel’s existence as a refuge for Jews. “The fight against Jew-hatred is not just a question for Israel, but for working people everywhere,” Kuniansky said.
“I see so many children and families being hurt on both sides in the war,” Porfirio said.
“Hamas is to blame for that,” Kuniansky replied, by placing its weapons, tunnels and command centers under hospitals and schools. She pointed to the Militant’s coverage of recent protests by people in Gaza against Hamas’ dictatorial rule and showed her The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
“I’d like to read those,” Porfirio said, buying the book and a Militant and signing up to put Kuniansky on the ballot.
Kuniansky also met Mary Farag, an Arabic translator from Egypt who is a Coptic Christian. Farag said she agreed Hamas must be defeated. She knew about its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood and its forerunners’ close ties to Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.
“Christians in Egypt faced persecution and discrimination in jobs and everything else” when the Muslim Brotherhood was in the government there between 2011 and 2013, she told Kuniansky.
Farag knew about pogroms against Jews in Egypt that forced tens of thousands to leave the country.
Today, the U.S. rulers are intervening in the Middle East to advance their own imperialist interests, Kuniansky said. “They have no interest in protecting Jews, advancing the national aspirations of Palestinians, or the interests of working people anywhere in the region.”
In the course of the class struggle, working people can be won to “breaking from capitalist politics and building a party of our own, a party that’s needed to lead the fight for workers to take power and to open the road to a world free of oppression,” Kuniansky said.
Farag signed the petition and bought a Militant subscription. She took some campaign flyers featuring the SWP’s program. She said she’d show them to her pastor and ask if Kuniansky could speak at the church.
Back fight for union rights!
In Somerdale, Kuniansky met Jose and Selena Rentas, and discussed recent labor struggles.
Jose Rentas said he’d worked at Amazon. “It was a sweat box! Not as humane as people think it is.”
“They don’t care about you at all,” Selena added.
“They don’t care about family issues,” Jose said. When his grandmother was dying in hospice, he drove all night back to the warehouse to ask for time off, which was denied.
“That’s why the workers in Amazon are trying to get a union,” he said. “Because of the way they’re treated. I think most workers support having a union.” Both of them signed the petition to put Kuniansky on the ballot.
Home care nurse Tatamira Richardson was on her way to donate food to her church pantry and stopped to talk with Kuniansky. She told the SWP candidate that “conditions in hospitals are getting worse. My patient died because of problems at a hospital.”
“Nurses and doctors are forced to take on more and more patients,” Kuniansky said.
“They don’t even have time to talk to patients,” Richardson agreed.
Kuniansky described how unionists on strike in Topeka, Kansas, had carried a picket sign reading, “Forced overtime = no family time.”
“That’s so true,” Richardson said. “No matter how much I work, I can’t keep up. For my three children it would cost $1,000 to send them to summer camp for just one week. And my daughter with an illness was without health coverage for a year.”
Cuba’s socialist revolution
Kuniansky told Richardson about the cradle-to-grave health care won in the course of Cuba’s socialist revolution, led by Fidel Castro, that overthrew the U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista dictatorship and organized to end capitalist exploitation.
“To this day, Washington wages an economic war against Cuba to try and keep health supplies and other necessities from reaching the island,” Kuniansky said. “It also slanders Cuban medical volunteers who bring much needed health care to people in other parts of the world. ”
“That’s why a lot of countries look at the U.S. like it’s a bully,” Richardson said.
She got a Militant and signed to put Kuniansky on the ballot. She’s interested in getting the title, Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power. She told Kuniansky, “When Malcolm came back from overseas, a lot of people turned on him. But no matter what, he had to tell the truth.”
At a parking lot in Saddlebrook in northern New Jersey April 26, SWP campaigners met Teamster member Monique Smith, who works as a 911 dispatcher.
“Workers need to have their voices heard,” she said. “The rich keep getting richer, while we’re struggling to survive.” She signed the petition and got a Militant subscription.
SWP campaigners are holding a rally in Union City May 10 at 7 p.m. to celebrate the conclusion of the ballot fight. Kuniansky, Craig Honts, the party’s candidate for lieutenant governor, and Paul Mailhot, the SWP candidate for mayor of New York City, will speak.