SWP on Minneapolis ballot! ‘Oppose rulers’ drive to war’
Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Minneapolis Kevin Dwire was certified on the ballot July 31. Dwire and campaign supporters turned in petitions with 725 signatures, well over the 500 required, after campaigning in Minneapolis and beyond last month.
They got a strong response from working people looking for a way out of the capitalist crisis, attracted to the SWP’s perspective of working people taking political power into our own hands. Edwin Fruit, the party’s candidate for City Council, will also be on the ballot, having paid a $250 filing fee.
Dwire and Fruit are part of the slate of candidates the SWP is running around the country, joining union strike battles and campaigning broadly among working people in cities and rural areas, at protests in defense of immigrant rights and other activities.
Everywhere, they start by pointing to the explosive and unresolvable conflicts among the world’s capitalist powers and the consequences for working people. It’s this mounting competition, SWP candidates explain, that drives the bosses’ assaults on workers and our unions, as well as the rise of Jew-hatred and violence.
The SWP tells the truth — the capitalist rulers are marching humanity toward fascism and more deadly wars. For workers looking to fight against this prospect, party campaigners explain what can be done today to build the party workers need.
“The U.S. is class-divided,” Dwire says in a statement campaigners use to introduce the party’s program. “The problems of society can only be solved by workers organized in our millions, with a leadership that has absorbed the lessons and history of working-class struggle. Joining the SWP is the most effective way of being a part of that historic struggle.”
It’s “the only party that presents a road forward — a fighting perspective for working people to take political power out of the hands of the ruling capitalist class and reorganize society not for profits of the rich, but to meet the needs of the vast majority.”
As part of this effort, Dwire visited the picket line of the Service Employees International Union in Stillwater to extend solidarity to health care workers there on strike for four days in a fight for a wage raise.
Campaign supporters in Minneapolis also set up a table at an Aug. 2 street fair.
“What’s the solution?” Jaron, a worker at the University of Minnesota, asked party campaigners. “I agree capitalism is the problem, but you can’t live without capitalism. I have to work, I have to pay bills. My student loan payments are as much as my rent.”
SWP member Joanne Murphy pointed to the Cuban Revolution and what it shows about what working people are capable of accomplishing.
“Millions of workers, organized under the leadership of Fidel Castro and the July 26 movement, took power from the capitalists,” she said. “Then it was possible for workers to take over the industry, land and the banks, and wipe out the debts of workers and farmers, as well as sharply limit rents.
“Workers here who are attracted to that example need to start by breaking with the two main capitalist parties, the Democrats and Republicans, and organize independently,” she said. Jaron was interested, saying he wanted to keep in touch.
Fight for health care as a right
Atlanta SWP mayoral candidate Susan LaMont campaigned at an apartment complex in Union City, a working-class town south of Atlanta, Aug. 2.
“There aren’t any ‘Atlanta’ or ‘Georgia’ solutions to the crisis we face,” LaMont said as she talked to retired construction worker Curtis Harris at his home. They discussed the deepening worldwide capitalist economic and social crisis.
“I know what you mean,” Harris said. “Look at the medical system. I had two relatives who died in hospitals during the last few years. One went into the hospital for something else, contracted COVID there and died.”
“That’s because medical care in the U.S. is not about helping people keep their health or saving lives during something like the COVID epidemic, but about making money,” LaMont said.
“What should be a human right for everyone is a big for-profit industry, one that can’t be ‘reformed’ as long as capitalism exists. That’s one big reason why working people need to take power,” she said, “to make a revolution where we can take care of each other and help all those who need medical care.”
Harris bought an introductory Militant subscription and Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes.
To find out more and join in campaigning for the SWP candidates, check the address nearest you.