BURLINGTON, Vt. — Supporters of Rachele Fruit, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president, began campaigning here, introducing the party and its program to thousands of working people across Vermont. In the process, they’re collecting more than twice the 1,000 signatures required to get Fruit and running mate Dennis Richter on the ballot in November.
Campaigners are meeting people with a wide range of opinions about the coming elections. Many don’t like the choices. Some said they would hold their nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
Outside a Walmart in Williston, Maynard Pearo signed the SWP petition. Pearo is a Mohawk Native American construction worker and runs a gunsmith shop. “The economic crisis affecting working people shows that our class needs to make a political break with the two parties of the rich. We need a party of labor,” SWP campaigner Craig Honts told him.
“Indians have a saying: ‘The Democrats and Republicans are two wings of the same bird,’” Pearo said. “Liberal or conservative, it’s the same thing.”
After signing the petition, Pearo wanted to discuss an article in the Militant whose headline caught his attention. It was about why the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to bear arms was needed to protect free speech and other constitutional freedoms. He subscribed to the paper.
Ali Levin and Kasey Rown told Honts the cost of starting a family was beyond them. “It’s good to see a candidate that actually supports working people and is not just raising money for programs that don’t help us,” Rown said. They both signed the petition and bought The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward, by SWP leaders Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark.
Andre Carriveau, an unemployed diesel mechanic, signed the SWP petition right away. Fifteen minutes later he came back to give campaigner David Rosenfeld beverages and a piece of fruit.
“In 2016 I believed that Bernie Sanders was standing up for working-class dinks like me. But the way he gave in to the status quo left a bad taste in my mouth,” he said.
“Politicians like Sanders help win workers to supporting the bosses’ parties and political system,” Rosenfeld said. “We’re finding many workers are in a fighting mood. Flight attendants have been rallying around the country to protest working conditions and wages, but also to fight the anti-labor laws that make it very difficult for rail and airline workers to strike.”
Carriveau said he is thinking about how he can help nurses if they go on strike this month. Some 1,900 nurses at the University of Vermont Medical Center announced July 2 they would strike July 12 for better staffing, wages and schedules.
“I think Palestinians have a right to a free Palestinian state but I don’t think it can happen with Hamas,” Carriveau said. “Israel deserves the right to be an independent state too. Why can’t there be a peaceful resolution?”
“The ideology of Hamas is like that of the Nazis,” Rosenfeld said. “They are committed to killing the Jews and driving them out Israel.”
“Why have the Jews have been persecuted for so many years?” Carriveau asked.
“There is a history going back thousands of years,” Rosenfeld replied. “But in the imperialist epoch, in times of crisis, the rulers turn to rightists whose banner is Jew-hatred to divert people from seeing the real cause of their problems, capitalism. They build a cadre in the streets to crush the working-class movement. That’s why this is such an important question for workers and unions worldwide.”
Carriveau endorsed the campaign, got a subscription to the Militant and bought The Fight Against Jew-Hatred in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class and The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us. He is looking forward to the upcoming Vermont visit of SWP vice presidential candidate Dennis Richter.
John Duffy is a medical worker at Central Vermont Medical Center. “Imaging and other lab support just won our first contract,” he told campaigner Alex Collins on his doorstep. “We got a significant pay raise. Before I needed a second job to get by. Now I don’t, but I still need a roommate.” Duffy told Collins his sister is a teacher in Massachusetts. “She and many of her co-workers work waiting tables at a nearby restaurant,” he said.
“There’s a lot of anger among workers because of these conditions,” Collins noted. “But the most important thing is that more workers are showing a willingness to fight back.”
In the first three days of petitioning, SWP campaigners gathered 486 signatures and sold eight subscriptions and 44 single copies of the Militant, and eight books on revolutionary working-class struggle.
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More than 1,000 sign up to put SWP on Washington state ballot
BY JACOB PERASSO
VANCOUVER, Wash. — More than 1,200 people have signed to put the Socialist Workers Party presidential ticket of Rachele Fruit and Dennis Richter on the ballot in Washington state, over the 1,000 required. Supporters have introduced the campaign to workers here, Spokane and other towns and plan to turn in more than 1,700 signatures.
“Workers are afraid they’ll lose whatever they have if they stand up,” Trevor Berrian, a 32-year-old logistics worker in Ridgefield told Vincent Auger, the SWP candidate for governor of Washington.
“The bosses want us to think we’ll be lost and broke if we fight,” said Auger. “It is a big decision, but what workers find when they do fight is how strong we are when we’re united. We become more confident and we see the solidarity other workers are ready to give.”
“When I think about the ideals of democracy, I see it as workers having a say in the work we do and how society is organized, but today we don’t have a say at all,” Berrian said.
“Democratic rights were born out of bourgeois revolutions,” said Auger. “Now in decline, the capitalist class has to undermine those rights. It’s up to workers to defend and extend them. This is why building a labor party, where the working class can have its own independent political voice, is so crucial.”
Berrian signed up for a subscription to the Militant and bought a copy of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us.
Supporters will campaign over the next few weeks, with a focused effort July 12-18. If you’d like to volunteer, contact the Socialist Workers Party campaign at 650 S. Orcas St., #120, Seattle, WA 98108, phone (206) 323-1755 or email swpseattle@gmail.com.
