Minutes after hearing the White House had sent B-2 aircraft to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities June 21, Kevin Dwire, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Minneapolis, told a Militant Labor Forum there that the SWP backs Israel’s fight to defend against a new Holocaust but opposes all military interference by Washington in the Middle East, in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.
The U.S. capitalist rulers care nothing for Jews in Israel, he said, they care about only one thing — protecting and advancing their own economic, political and military interests against all their rivals.
Starting June 28, Dwire and SWP campaign supporters will begin a two-week, three-weekend effort to win 750 people to sign to put the party on the ballot and to invite them to join the campaign. They’ll introduce the party’s program and activities to convince workers who are interested to join the SWP.
Around the country, party candidates and members are doing the same types of things, taking the Militant to workers on their jobs, their doorsteps, at strike picket lines and elsewhere. This issue includes the front-page SWP National Committee statement, “Defend Israel’s battle to prevent another Holocaust! U.S. troops, bases and warships out of the Middle East!”
In Fort Worth, Texas, SWP member Gerardo Sánchez talked with a construction worker originally from Mexico on his doorstep June 22. He told Sánchez his nephew had been in the U.S. Army and was deployed in Iraq.
“Why is the U.S. so interested in intervening in the Middle East?” he asked Sánchez.
Washington is defending its own power and plunder in the region, with its rich oil deposits and other assets, Sánchez said. “The SWP is the anti-war party,” he added, pointing to the party’s opposition to all the U.S. imperialist rulers’ wars, from World War II, to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, to their military intervention in the Middle East today.
The worker got a copy of the book The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class. “This is how we learn from each other,” he said, thanking Sánchez for knocking on his door.
SWP campaigners used the statement, “Protest killings and attacks on Jews from Washington, D.C., to Boulder, Colorado,” by Norton Sandler, SWP candidate for governor of California, and Laura Garza, the party’s candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, as they introduced the party to working people in Elkins Park, near Philadelphia June 21, Chris Hoeppner reports.
Combating Jew-hating violence
“Where does this type of violence come from?” one student asked the SWP campaigners.
Party members explained that Jew-hating violence is endemic to the imperialist epoch and that a variety of Stalinist groups have openly praised the killings and called for more.
“We pointed out that these groups have deep connections to the left of capitalist politics and to broader meritocratic middle-class layers,” Hoeppner told the Militant. “That they’re a danger to the working class.” The student got a copy of Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning Under Capitalism by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes to learn more about the growth of this social layer, its subordination to the class outlook of the capitalist rulers, and what the SWP has to say about the powerful capacities of working people. He picked up a Militant subscription.
All told, SWP members there sold four subscriptions and two books on revolutionary working-class politics. “We pointed to the strengths of working people in the U.S. and worldwide, including in the recent nationwide strike by truckers in Iran despite the Iranian government’s moves to arrest some of them,” Hoeppner said. Each of the new subscribers wants to know more about the party.
In Forest Park near Atlanta, SWP member Lisa Potash knocked on the door of a plumber who is African American June 21. He responded positively when she said the SWP backs Israel’s right to exist and that Washington’s course in the Middle East is determined by the U.S. rulers’ class interests, not any concern for Jews, Palestinians or other working people in the region.
“We have problems here to deal with,” he said.
Workers in the U.S. are part of a common international class, Potash responded. “We need to extend solidarity with workers fighting the effects of the capitalist crisis around the world.”
He liked the fact that the Militant is bilingual, ensuring it is available to the millions of workers in the U.S. whose first language is Spanish — and making the paper a more effective tool for bringing working people together. He got a subscription to find out more about the party and its politics.
To join the SWP campaigning to back Israel’s’ war to protect a refuge for Jews, and to advance workers’ interests in the U.S. and worldwide, go to the directory.
