James Harris, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for delegate to Congress from Washington, D.C., brought solidarity to the fight of Haitian immigrants at a March 17 press conference and rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court. The action was organized in defense of continued Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, which the Donald Trump administration is seeking to end.
“I like that sign for amnesty,” Medelinda Charles, a Haitian law student, told Harris.
“The fight for amnesty for workers without papers helps unify and strengthen the entire working class,” Harris said. “It’s a class question with a history here in the U.S., despite efforts to erase it.”
“My parents were farmworkers in Belle Glade, Florida. My father still is,” Charles said. “I don’t know anything about that history.”
Harris told Charles, “In 2006, a million people marched in Los Angeles demanding rights for immigrants and chanting, ‘We are workers, not criminals.’ I lived there at the time, it was the biggest protest I’ve ever marched in.
“Today history is being written. Nearly 4,000 union meatpackers at the JBS packinghouse, mostly immigrants, confidently went on strike in Greeley, Colorado.”
Charles got a subscription to the Militant to learn more.
Campaigns by SWP candidates in 13 cities and Washington, D.C., and drives to win ballot status in Minnesota and New Jersey, on top of the successful one earlier in California, are important for expanding the reach of the SWP. Only by breaking with the Democrats and Republicans, the two parties of the bosses, can working people move toward solving the problems our class faces.
The election campaigns run alongside the Spring effort to increase the readership of the Militant, books by SWP and other revolutionary working-class leaders and win contributions to this year’s Militant Fighting Fund. From March 14 through May 12, members of the SWP and Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom are campaigning to sell 1,300 subscriptions to the Militant, the same number of books and raise $165,000 for the fund.
John Hawkins, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio, traveled to Shelby, Ohio, March 13 to join the picket line of United Steelworkers Local 3057 on strike against ArcelorMittal. “We support the workers’ fight to defend their living standard, safety, and rights on the job,” Hawkins told picket captain Josh Sengstock. “The U.S. rulers’ war drive is just an extension of their drive to beat down workers here at home.” Sengstock said he agreed.
Hawkins told Sengstock that the SWP calls for the U.S. out of the Middle East. “We are the peace party,” he said.
“I’ve heard a lot of the oil to China passes through the Hormuz Strait or Venezuela,” Sengstock said.
“In the dog-eat-dog capitalist system, which the U.S. capitalists dominate, it’s not enough for them to have an abundant supply of oil, they also want to have a chokehold on their competitors’ supply,” Hawkins said. “Their competition is the root cause of war. Only our class — through the strengthening of our unions and the construction of our own revolutionary party — can end these conflicts, by taking the power to make war out of their hands.”
On March 21, after 67 days on strike, the union members approved a proposed agreement with ArcelorMittal. Details haven’t been released.
At a March 18 informational picket line organized by SWP members in Cincinnati to demand “U.S. hands off Cuba! End the blockade!” Hawkins met Brian Render. On his way home, Render had stopped to join the picket.
“End the blockade of Cuba?” Render asked, “I’m for that.”
After discussing U.S. imperialism’s war drive with Hawkins and other participants, Render bought a subscription to the Militant and a copy of Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by Víctor Dreke. He asked to be informed about any future actions.
To join with SWP campaigns, contact the distributors nearest you.