Working people face a world of increasing social crisis and boss assaults on our living and working conditions and government attacks on constitutional rights. The capitalist system, with its intensified economic conflicts and military rivalries, is marching toward another world war, rising Jew-hatred and the threat of nuclear conflagration.
The Socialist Workers Party is the working-class, anti-war party that opposes the capitalist rulers’ course.
SWP campaigners support the defensive wars being waged by both Israel and Ukraine. Only the Israeli military can decisively crush Hamas, which has reemerged from Gaza’s tunnels to murderously suppress Palestinians and threaten another Holocaust against the Jews in Israel. Ukraine’s working people are determined to defend their country’s sovereignty against Moscow’s brutal war.
SWP candidates and their supporters explain the rulers’ parties, the Democrats and Republicans, have no solution to the mounting problems working people face. Both defend the system of exploitation and oppression ruled over by the capitalist class.
Working-class resistance is on the rise. Kaiser health workers have struck on the West Coast and in Hawaii. Teachers and others are taking strike action in Canada. Building solidarity with labor battles, opposing the attacks on immigrant workers and backing other working-class struggles is vital to strengthen the unity of our class in the labor movement and more broadly.
The SWP election campaigns go hand in hand with the international campaign to expand the readership of the Militant and books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries. The drive runs through Nov. 18. Good progress is being made toward the goal of selling 1,300 Militant subscriptions and an equivalent number of books. The Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K. are also part of this effort.
Contributions from party members, supporters and other working people are the backbone of the SWP’s Party-Building Fund, with a target of $140,000.
Rebecca Williamson, SWP candidate for King County Executive, and campaigner Michele Smith met Eric Vargas at his home in Auburn, Washington, Oct. 21. He recently worked for a company that displays merchandise in supermarkets. He objected to the bosses’ demand he wear a body camera.
“The Militant and these books explain the class struggle today and make it understandable,” Williamson said. “They show what working people have accomplished and what can be done toward building a movement of millions for the working class to take power.”
‘I’m trying to get informed’
“I’m trying to get informed,” Vargas told them. “I don’t know much, but I do know the political system is broken. It’s really bad.”
After a wide-ranging discussion, Vargas took out a six-month Militant subscription, picked up seven Pathfinder books and contributed $30 to the Party-Building Fund.
The books he got were The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark; The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class; Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning under Capitalism; Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power; and Cuba and the Coming American Revolution. The last three titles are by Barnes.
He also got Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women by Waters, Joseph Hansen and Evelyn Reed; and Women In Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolutionby Asela de los Santos, Vilma Espín, and Yolanda Ferrer.
Joel Britton writes that several thousand people protested in San Francisco Oct. 23 against the threat by the Donald Trump administration to send federal troops and Immigration and Customs Enforcement cops into the city. The rally was promoted by the San Francisco Labor Council.
Campaign supporters for Norton Sandler, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of California, distributed flyers saying: “Stop ICE raids and deportations now! Amnesty for undocumented immigrants working in the US — to unite working people and cut across the bosses’ efforts to divide us and drive down wages.”
Seven participants signed up for introductory subscriptions to the Militant. Three Pathfinder books were sold.
Solidarity with teachers strike
Katy LeRougetel, Communist League candidate for mayor of Montreal, met with Giriraj Vyas while knocking on doors in Edmonton Oct. 21. She explained she had come to build solidarity with the Alberta teachers strike. Vyas said he had been part of a five-week strike by support workers in Ontario colleges. Looking over the paper, he said he supported the Militant’s call for the defeat of Hamas and defense of Israel’s existence as a refuge for Jews. He signed up for a subscription.
“What is a mayoralty candidate from Montreal doing here?” asked writer and music teacher Loree Mackay as she invited LeRougetel into her house in Edmonton. When the teachers rallied in front of the provincial legislature last week, Mackay had donated meatballs to them.
After a discussion on the CL’s political program and the need to build a party capable of leading working people to take political power into our own hands, she subscribed to the Militant, saying, “I will research this more.”
If you want to join in campaigning or contribute to the SWP Party-Building Fund, contact a distributor.
