October 8, 2001
Washington is positioning its warplanes, troops and warships around Afghanistan, preparing for a brutal assault on the people of that country. At the same time the rulers are not wasting a day in pressing their decades-long offensive against the rights of working people at home.
The further militarization of the country and ability to use military forces at home is a long sought after goal of the ruling class. They are preparing for big class battles with working people that they know are coming down the road. Most of all, the bosses want to do everything in their power to limit the ability of workers to organize, discuss and mobilize in their own interests.
Building on resistance to the imperialist war at home, workers and farmers can join in demanding: End the imperialists’ war against the Afghan people! Stop the assault on workers’ rights!
October 8, 1976
Recent polls show increasing numbers of voters sick and tired of capitalist politics and anything but excited by the Democratic and Republican party presidential candidates Gerald Ford and James Carter.
In the first national presidential debate on TV, they had a breakdown and the sound went off. It was “the best thing that could happen,” one worker in a Cleveland bar told a correspondent. “Both candidates demonstrated a firm grip on their lecterns,” was the comment of the editor of Wall Street’s weekly financial newspaper, Barron’s.
“I thought the red in Carter’s tie highlighted his hair and the blue of the rug highlighted Ford’s suit,” one woman said in a letter to the NBC affiliate in Nashville, “but I’m going to vote for Peter Camejo of the Socialist Workers Party.”
The SWP is on the ballot in 26 states.
October 8, 1951
SAN FRANCISCO — Frank Barbaria and Harry Press, the Socialist Workers Party candidates for Mayor and Supervisor, have completed 18 appearances before union meetings in San Francisco after the first two weeks of campaigning.
The Ship Scalers and Painters local responded with exceptional enthusiasm to Barbaria’s socialist analysis and solution to the workers’ problems. Barbaria described the sharp drop in production in 1949. “The growing economic crisis led to a more intensive struggle to capture old markets and conquer new ones. This is the basic cause of capitalist war.”
During the question period, Barbaria was asked his opinion of the thought-control Smith Act. He replied the first prosecutions under this act was the Minneapolis Case in which 18 leaders of the great Minneapolis Teamsters union and of the SWP were railroaded to prison.