Socialist Workers Party members are discussing what workers can do to end capitalist exploitation, oppression and the growing threat of more wars, as they present the party’s election campaigns in working-class neighborhoods, on strike picket lines and elsewhere. They’re explaining why the best thing workers can do is to join the SWP.
In Minneapolis, Kevin Dwire and Edwin Fruit, the party’s candidates for mayor and City Council Ward 1, celebrated at a forum July 12 getting over 750 signatures, well over the requirement to put Dwire on the ballot. As part of the effort, campaigners sold 21 books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries, 23 Militant subscriptions and 88 copies of the paper. They’re organizing to meet the 10 people who asked to learn more about the party.
Dwire described the response to his campaign at the city’s Nakomis Beach Park July 8. More than one beachgoer stopped when they saw the signs party campaigners set up reading, “Oppose Jew-hatred! Defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews” and “Amnesty for all undocumented workers.”
“I can’t believe you are here with this sign,” Peter Blau said. He got a year’s subscription to the Militant for a family member, and for himself a copy of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
During the ballot drive, several people told campaigners the SWP is the only party that calls itself socialist that today speaks out against Jew-hatred. That’s because “the SWP’s continuity goes back to the Russian Revolution,” Dwire told the July 12 meeting. “The fight by Lenin and the Bolsheviks against pogroms was key to unifying workers and advancing the struggle to bring a government of working people to power.”
In Manteca, California, Socialist Workers Party members Andrea Morrell and Maggie Trowe visited the picket line of members of Teamsters Local 439 at the Republic Services Forward landfill to offer support and learn more about their fight.
As workers took turns taking a water break, the SWP members displayed the party’s literature. When Saira Rosales saw Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning Under Capitalism by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, she said, “They’re rich because we’re smart!”
She and Kyra Bulos, both scale operators at the landfill, explained how Teamster garbage truck drivers convinced the three dozen workers at the site to fight for union affiliation, which they won last year.
“We do all the work, and it’s hot and dangerous,” Rosales said. “We work overtime because the bosses don’t hire enough people. They make millions but only offer us a small raise.”
She and Bulos bought Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? as well as The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward and a subscription to the Militant.
Katy LeRougetel, Communist League candidate for mayor of Montreal, spoke with primary school teacher Hayet Boulegheb at her doorstep in the city’s St. Leonard borough July 13.
“We need a radical change,” Boulegheb said. “Education is in decay. But education is the last thing on the government’s mind.” She was part of a strike by public sector workers in Quebec in 2023.
“Wages weren’t the main goal, it was to improve working conditions,” she added, before describing the hardship that strikers faced. “I know a couple, both teachers, who lost their house.”
When workers fight, LeRougetel said, “we show how we can build unity.” But the government is run to defend capitalist interests. “To make lasting gains, we need a political party to organize working people to take political power into our own hands.”
“I’m with you all the way,” Boulegheb said. She signed the petition to put LeRougetel, and Philippe Tessier, the CL’s candidate for mayor of the borough of St. Leonard on the ballot.
To date, CL campaigners have collected 94 signatures toward their goal of 300 for LeRougetel and 32 toward their goal of 150 for Tessier. Both goals are 50% above the requirement.
Mary Martin in Minneapolis, Maggie Trowe in Oakland and Beverly Bernardo in Montreal contributed to this article.