Members of the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K. are discussing with fellow workers what our class and the unions can do in the face of the more and more violent conflicts among rival capitalist powers for markets, resources and labor to exploit. This discussion has sharpened since Washington’s Jan. 3 military operation in Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro.
And they’re explaining that the U.S. rulers predatory foreign policy is an extension of the brutal methods they use against working people at home, including the government’s stepped-up assaults on immigrant workers. As they present a road forward for the working class, SWP members are selling more copies of the Militant and subscriptions, as well as books by party leaders and other revolutionaries.
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Need for an amnesty for immigrants
After a march of thousands in subzero temperatures protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests and violence in Minneapolis Jan. 23, many protesters entering the heated Skyway stopped at the Socialist Workers Party campaign table. They were attracted by the party’s sign “Immigrant rights is union fight: Amnesty for undocumented workers.”
SWP members Helen Meyers and Joanne Murphy met Ace Getahum, a Target Center worker and member of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 292.
“I was an immigrant 30 years ago from Ethiopia. I know these people ICE is deporting are just working, trying to do everything right,” he told the SWP members. He bought a subscription to the Militant.
Meyers and Murphy described how amnesty for millions of immigrants was won in 1986. “That would be great,” Getahum said. “We have to work together, all of us, for all humanity. Keep up what you’re doing.”
Sonja Denn from Mankato, some 80 miles southwest of Minneapolis, was one of the other protesters who subscribed to the Militant. Denn said she works with a woman “who has become a friend, but is now too afraid to come into work as ICE has been carrying out operations in the Mankato area.”
Eager to learn more about why the SWP says the fight for amnesty is crucial, protesters bought four copies of Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters. The book describes powerful actions against raids and deportations that swept the U.S. leading up to and on May Day in 2006 and 2007. Led by immigrants, the actions strengthened the entire working class.
An array of books by SWP and other revolutionary leaders attracted attention, especially those by Malcolm X. One man bought Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes. A cleaning service worker purchased Malcolm X Talks to Young People.
In New York City, SWP member Seth Galinsky reports that more than 2,000 people joined a protest there against ICE violence Jan. 23. Laborers Local 1010, Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, the United Federation of Teachers and other unions, along with immigrant rights groups, had contingents.
Kevin Dozier, a member of SEIU Local 32BJ, which organizes building workers, spoke to the Militant. “I’ve traveled a lot,” he said. “No matter where you’re from, everybody wants to have a decent life, be happy, raise their family. I know we can do it if we stick together.”
SWP members got a good response, selling five Militant subscriptions, 22 single copies, and four books, including The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class to a woman who passed by the action after visiting the Anne Frank exhibit at the nearby Center for Jewish History.
In similar actions across the U.S. that day, SWP members found people wanting to learn more about the program and activity of the party. At a rally of a few hundred in Los Angeles where Laura Garza, SWP candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, campaigned, protesters bought five Militant subscriptions and five books on revolutionary politics.
Workers need to take political power
In Cincinnati, John Hawkins, the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio, was interviewed by the University of Cincinnati News Record at a Jan. 23 rally and march of some 400 people in solidarity with protests in Minneapolis.
“Amnesty is what we have to fight for,” Hawkins, a member of UNITE HERE Local 24, told reporters. “All workers who are here need the same legal rights, regardless of where they were born. That’s a necessity for workers and our unions to defend ourselves against the bosses’ attacks on our wages, pensions, safety and working conditions.”
Neither of the major capitalist parties, Democratic or Republican, “defend the interests of working people in this country,” the SWP candidate said. They exist to defend the interests of the ruling rich. “The trade unions and our allies need to forge a mass movement to take political power out of the hands of the profit-driven capitalist class. To be successful, such a movement needs a leadership, a revolutionary workers party,” Hawkins continued. “I’m running in this election to build that party, the Socialist Workers Party.”
In the last two weeks, SWP members in Cincinnati have noticed an uptick in interest among both rail workers and passersby at CSX’s Queensgate Yard, where party members have campaigned regularly for the past three years, Anthony Dutrow reports.
A young woman drove by SWP members distributing literature there Jan. 15, but turned around and came back to discuss with them what was going on in Venezuela and Minneapolis, as well as the U.S. rulers’ moves to seize Greenland. She said she didn’t agree with everything in the Militant but decided to get a subscription.
“The next week on Jan. 22 a signalman stopped and said, ‘I’ve seen you guys out here for a while now,’” Dutrow said. After a brief discussion he got a copy of the paper, saying he’d let the SWP members know what he thinks the next time he sees them.
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