“We want to build protests against the U.S. blockade and threats against Cuba with whoever wants to join us,” Margaret Trowe, Socialist Workers Party candidate for California governor, told participants at a campaign meeting in Los Angeles Feb. 22.
“It’s important to stand up to Washington in the streets,” she said, pointing to actions that have taken place and are being called in cities around the country and worldwide.
“People ask us why is the U.S. attacking Cuba?” Trowe said. “Fidel Castro has answered this. ‘Our crime is we made a socialist revolution right under the nose of imperialism.’”
There are more opportunities today to explain the stakes for working people in opposing the U.S. rulers’ war moves, Trowe explained. “And why the bosses’ attacks on workers at home — including raids targeting immigrant workers — are part of the rulers’ march toward a third world war.”
Trowe, a hotel worker and member of the UNITE HERE union in the Bay Area, was in Los Angeles for three days of campaigning, including to collect signatures to get on the ballot.
Laura Garza, SWP candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, told the meeting she had joined a rally of the National Association of Letter Carriers earlier that day. She offered solidarity with their fight for a new contract and introduced the SWP campaign. Five unionists bought subscriptions to the Militant and four books were sold, including Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes.
Workers in power in Cuba
In Seattle SWP members Rebecca Williamson and Michele Smith campaigned at the entrance to Boeing’s Renton plant Feb. 12. The plant employs hundreds of workers. Party members campaign outside with the Militant regularly.
“Cuba is the only country in the world where workers have power,” Smith told one worker after he stopped to talk. “The SWP is reaching out to groups in the Seattle area to call for public actions defending Cuba.” He contributed $20 for a copy of the Militant, and asked if she knew a relative of his. “I work with her in the Seattle-Cuba Friendship Committee to organize events,” Smith replied.
She showed him The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward, a book that highlights opportunities ahead for class conscious workers as the decadeslong retreat by the labor movement has ended. He bought the book and took a copy of the SWP’s call to action to oppose Washington’s assaults on Cuba.
Another worker was running to work, but stopped “for a short discussion about the capitalist crises that are leading us toward a third world war and how workers in the U.S. will be used as cannon fodder by the ruling rich,” Smith said. “Pointing to his chest and shaking his head, he indicated that is not what he wants to do with his life.” He got a copy of the Militant.
In Washington, D.C., Feb. 21 hundreds of supporters of Ukrainian sovereignty gathered at the Lincoln Memorial.
SWP members joined the action and set up a table. After seeing a sign at the SWP table on the need to fight against Jew-hatred, one man told SWP member Samir Hazboun, “You just became my favorite socialists.” A woman originally from Crimea bought The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class. Three other books and three copies of the Militant were sold.
At a similar action of more than 250 in Chicago Feb. 21, SWP member Ilona Gersh reports interest in the SWP. Party campaigners sold 22 copies of the Militant and one subscription.
A high school student bought The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch. She told Gersh she wanted to know the facts about the Holocaust in World War II when 6 million Jews were slaughtered. “We have to know the history before we can explain the lessons of it,” she said.
To join in campaigning for the SWP candidates, contact the area nearest you.