“I agree, a labor party is needed to draw together everyone, unionized or not, as well as others like farmers and mom-and-pop business owners,” Jesse Dansby, right, a board operator and striker at the Marathon oil refinery in Detroit, told SWP campaigner Dan Fein, left, and this worker-correspondent on the Teamsters Local 283 picket line Sept. 16. Dansby endorsed the Socialist Workers Party candidates, Rachele Fruit for U.S. president and Dennis Richter for vice president, and wants to do more.
“Unions need to break from the political parties of the bosses — Democrats and Republicans alike,” Fein said. “A party of labor would organize workers to counter the bosses’ drive to unload the burdens created by capitalism onto our backs.”
“People are waking up to the fact that the government is working against us,” Dansby said. “The two-party system has failed us. They make promises but when the rubber hits the road, they leave us high and dry.” Dansby got a Militant subscription and a copy of 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.
Dansby was interested in learning more about the strikes and organizing drives that built the Teamsters in the Midwest in the 1930s. Fein said that union leaders drew unemployed workers, farmers and women into those struggles. He pointed out that labor needs to champion the fight for Black equality today.
“They want to divide us,” Dansby said. “But they’re going to have a hard time convincing the young generation. They go to school with kids of different nationalities, play with them, and learn with them.”