SWP campaign in Minneapolis goes over the top in ballot drive
MINNEAPOLIS — After nine days of campaigning throughout the city, Socialist Workers Party members have collected 757 signatures, over the goal of 750, to put Kevin Dwire, the SWP’s candidate for mayor of Minneapolis, on the ballot. They’re reaching out to working people who are looking for answers to the crisis of capitalism and discussing what we need to do to advance our class interests.
“The Democratic and Republican parties are both for the rich,” Cecci Fuglie told Dwire at the parking lot at Cub Foods here July 6. “It seems like the Democrats are caving in to everything the Republicans want now.”
“Both parties represent the same capitalist class,” Dwire responded. “Workers need to organize independently of them. All politics is class against class. We need a party of our own to lead the fight to take political power. That’s what the Socialist Workers Party exists for.”
Fuglie signed Dwire’s petition and got a subscription to the Militant and a copy of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward, which includes the SWP’s 2022 resolution.
That evening Dwire and Edwin Fruit, SWP candidate for City Council Ward 1, spoke to 34 people at a crowded campaign forum. Among those attending were four people who had recently met the party.
Fruit explained the SWP calls for an amnesty for workers in the U.S. without papers and fighting for this is key to unite working people. The federal government is pressing its crackdown on immigrants, including in the Twin Cities. Since early June at least 15 Hmong have been arrested here and now face deportation to Laos. Many have lived in the area for decades since arriving as children after the Vietnam War.
Dwire discussed the importance for working people of the fight against Jew-hatred and the defense of Israel’s right to exist as a refuge from pogroms and other attacks. “When I campaign, I find working people are very concerned about the wars unfolding today and the prospect for deeper conflicts.
“The U.S. rulers are trying to impose a Pax Americana across the Middle East. I know what the word means, but in fact it’s not about peace at all,” he said. “It refers to the stability U.S. rulers require to ensure their domination and plunder of the peoples and resources there, and to bolster their position against rivals across the world.”
Dwire said the U.S. government is putting tremendous pressure on Israel to sign a deal to end the war that would leave Hamas intact, just as the Israeli government is advancing its war to dismantle the murderous Jew-hating group.
“Struggles by working people in Iran against the rulers there, like the recent strike by truckers, show they’re key allies in the fight to prevent the regime in Tehran from carrying through its ambitions of inflicting another Holocaust,” he said.
In the U.S., Dwire explained, the government’s recent attack on funding for programs like Medicaid, which millions of workers depend on, shows “the class against class framework of all politics under capitalism. The rulers start from what little they can force us to live on, while workers start from what we actually need.” The SWP opposes these assaults, he said, and explained that replacing the for-profit health insurance setup with government-provided universally available health care requires changing which class rules and bringing working people to power.
To help make that possible, Dwire urged participants to join the Socialist Workers Party.
Cesar Zagal, a truck driver who lives in St. Paul, talked to SWP member Lisa Rottach, who was campaigning in a grocery store parking lot. Zagal is originally from Mexico. He told Rottach the economic devastation there drives workers like him to seek work and a better life in the U.S.
Zagal said he’s concerned about the prospects of another world war. “This will be a war where we will all die, even if you’re not directly bombed,” he said. “It won’t be fought with guns, but with nuclear weapons.”
Rottach said the fight to prevent a third world war and a nuclear conflagration was tied to Israel’s fight to stop the Iranian rulers from acquiring nuclear weapons. The threat of a nuclear war can only be ended by the working class taking power into its own hands, above all, here in the U.S.
To join in campaigning for the SWP, contact the area nearest you listed in the directory.
