Members of the Socialist Workers Party kicked off the party’s fall propaganda campaign and fund drive Sept. 20. They’re presenting the SWP’s response to events in world politics to fellow workers and inviting them to join with the party in today’s union and political struggles to advance the interests of working people.
They’re discussing why a road forward for the working class requires taking political power from the capitalist class and into our own hands.
The goal of the campaign is to sell 1,300 subscriptions to the Militant, the same number of books on revolutionary working-class politics, and to win those attracted to the SWP to contribute to it and to join. Members of the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K. are part of the effort. SWP members are organizing to raise $140,000 for the annual Party-Building Fund. The campaigns run through Nov. 18.
Party members go far and wide to meet workers on their doorsteps and on union picket lines. SWP campaigners are joining protests against Jew-hatred and other actions of vital importance to the working class. The party’s candidates for public office are helping lead these efforts.
‘’The police do what they want to do,” Stéphanie Labelle told Philippe Tessier, Communist League candidate for mayor of Saint-Leonard, a borough of Montreal, when he visited her to discuss renewing her Militant subscription Sept. 17. Labelle had participated in demonstrations against cop brutality in the wake of the police killing of Abisay Cruz in Montreal last spring.
“When the police came to ‘help’ Abisay, they killed him,” she said. “When Jews get attacked in the streets, the police take a long time to act, if they act at all. Look at the Jewish father who was attacked in front of his kids in August. It took up to an hour for the cops to get there.”
The cops, like the government, act for Canada’s capitalist rulers, Tessier said. Workers need to come together and act in our own class interests. “When the government ordered striking flight attendants back to work recently, the strikers defied the order, setting an example to workers everywhere,” he said. The CL points to the capacities of working people, demonstrated powerfully in past struggles that show it’s possible to for us to take political power. Labelle renewed her subscription for six months.
Tessier and Katy LeRougetel, the CL’s candidate for mayor of Montreal, were certified on the ballot after campaigners turned in 150 signatures for Tessier and 300 for LeRougetel. During that effort they sold 30 subscriptions to the Militant, 40 books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries and more than 70 copies of the paper.
The campaign to expand the Militant’s readership takes place amid sharpening trade conflicts, an escalating arms race and more wars.
Workers can stop the march to war
“The deepening rivalries between Washington and other imperialist powers, as well as with Moscow and Beijing, are products of the deepening crisis of capitalism,” Laura Anderson, SWP candidate for mayor of Miami, told 125 people at a candidates debate Sept. 20 at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex. “Workers can see that imperialism is marching humanity toward a third world war.”
Anderson pointed to Washington’s deployment of a naval armada off the coast of Venezuela, which it claims is aimed at stopping drug traffickers. She described the U.S. government’s renewed militarization of Puerto Rico, with some 6,500 Army and Navy troops, including forces trained in amphibious invasions. This reinforcement in the U.S. colony threatens new intervention in the Caribbean and Latin America.
“Until working people break from the Democrats and Republicans,” Anderson said, “we cannot make any political advances. Both parties serve the capitalist rulers, carry out their wars abroad and their assaults on workers at home.
“The conquest of power by workers and farmers is the only road to peace and the effective defense of labor and of the earth’s land, waters and atmosphere. Gains for working people can and will be won as byproducts along that road of revolutionary struggle,” she said.
The Cuban Revolution shows it’s possible for workers to organize society and put human needs first, she said. After the debate one participant approached Anderson to tell her she backed her comments about Cuba and supported its socialist revolution. SWP members are active in protests against Washington’s economic and political war against the Cuban people and their government.
In Minneapolis, Kevin Dwire, SWP candidate for mayor, joined a Sept. 12 informational picket line of his union, UNITE HERE Local 17, to build support for the hotel workers’ contract fight.
Hours later, Dwire and Edwin Fruit, SWP candidate for Minneapolis City Council in Ward 1, joined a rally for Teamsters members at the University of Minnesota. Like many workers squeezed by the crisis of capitalism, the cafeteria, maintenance and landscape workers there demand higher wages. The next day the union announced it had won a tentative agreement with the university.
“I’m all about workers’ rights, even though I don’t have a union,” Owen Sall told Dwire on his doorstep in southern Minneapolis Sept. 14. Sall installs printing presses and told Dwire he was impressed the mayoral candidate came to his door. He took a campaign brochure and a copy of the Militant to learn more.
To help get out the Militant and books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries, contact the area nearest you.
Beverly Bernardo in Montreal, Rachele Fruit in Miami and Mary Martin in Minneapolis contributed to this article.
