Members of the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom are campaigning in the working class, discussing the stakes in opposing Washington’s assault on Iran. They’re getting out the statement issued by the SWP National Committee, “U.S. Out of the Middle East!”
“SWP members campaigned door to door in Fort Worth the day after the U.S. bombing began. We found working people were seriously concerned about the consequences,” reports Alyson Kennedy, SWP candidate for governor of Texas.
Kennedy joined SWP member Gerardo Sánchez to talk with 19-year-old Jamarion Conner and his brother, Caleb Carter, March 1. They both work at a FedEx facility. Conner said he had called his sister, who is in the military, to ask, “‘Is this attack on Iran for real?’ She said ‘Yes. They are really going to war.’ I don’t think that the U.S. should send troops to Iran. Both sides will lose lives,” he said.
“The U.S. competes with China and Russia and other powers for markets and profits,” Kennedy said. “That’s what’s behind the U.S. attack on Iran. They want control of the Middle East.”
“Israel has been attacked by the Iranian regime. It wants to destroy Israel,” Sánchez added, pointing to the need to defend the one country that offers Jews a refuge.
“I was going to join the military,” Conner said, “but now I’m not so sure.”
“The working class will have to take power and run society to ensure that the world is not devastated by another world war,” Kennedy said. Conner signed up to get a subscription to the Militant.
Earlier that day, Miguel Castro, a machine operator in a warehouse, told Kennedy, “Other countries won’t want to do business with the U.S.” Washington “could do things the diplomatic way, but not bombing other countries.”
“The SWP says working people must oppose U.S. imperialism’s assault against Iran,” Kennedy said. “The U.S. rulers want to dominate Iran and the Middle East to plunder the region’s vast oil and other natural resources. We defend Israel’s right to exist as a safe haven for Jews.”
The U.S. assault “will cost people’s lives,” Castro said. “We will suffer for this and a lot of people will die.” He asked her to return next week when he’d have money to subscribe to the Militant.
In New York City Feb. 28 Jamora Allen told SWP member Brian Williams and this reporter that she “was just speaking with a friend about the U.S. bombing of Iran, asking her did Trump really do it?”
“The U.S. ruling class is using its military might to press its interests around the world and working people have to oppose its war moves,” Williams said, showing her the Militant with front-page articles opposing Washington’s attacks on Iran and its oil blockade of Cuba.
Allen, a hospitality worker, liked the front-page photo of the “U.S. hands off Cuba” picket in New York Feb. 22 and was glad to see coverage of the recent nurses strike here. She subscribed to the paper saying, “I want this information.”
‘Defend Ukraine!’
In Pittsburgh, SWP candidates Tony Lane for lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and Sergio Zambrana for U.S. Congress joined a protest Feb. 24 at the University of Pittsburgh marking the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. They carried signs defending Ukraine against Moscow’s assault, calling for U.S. troops out of Europe, and protesting Washington’s oil blockade of Cuba. The Pitt News, the university’s student newspaper, ran a photo of Lane with his sign.
SWP members at the protest sold two Militant subscriptions and two books about the Cuban Revolution. One participant also bought Lenin’s Final Fight. It includes articles by V.I. Lenin on his battle to keep the Bolshevik-led government on a working-class course after the Russian Revolution, including supporting self-determination for Ukraine and combatting all expressions of Great Russian chauvinism.
At an action of some 50 people protesting U.S. attacks on Cuba at the Miami International Airport March 1, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate Rachele Fruit met Robert Rosa, a member of the American Indian Movement. Rosa read the SWP campaign statement that demands “U.S. hands off Cuba! End Washington’s economic blockade!”
He told Fruit about how Native Americans have had to fight for the right to practice their religion. Fruit pointed to other struggles for constitutional freedoms, including the Militant’s current fight to reverse the ban on several of its issues in Florida prisons.
“It’s important to draw lessons from class-struggle history,” SWP member Laura Anderson told Rosa, “along with joining street actions today, whether it’s a union picket line or demanding U.S. imperialism get out of countries around the world.”
“I’m very interested in this. It’s the way to liberate the oppressed,” he said as he subscribed to the Militant.
At the Feb. 21 action against the U.S. blockade of Cuba in Vancouver, British Columbia, Steven Avalos talked with Communist League supporter Paul Kouri. Avalos visited Cuba in 2015. He bought a Militant subscription and Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa.
“Although things have gotten worse, Cuba is a very special place and I try and do whatever I can to support it,” Avalos told Kouri on the phone a few days later.
To join in campaigning with SWP candidates, contact the nearest office.