OAKLAND, Calif. — Socialist Workers Party mayoral candidate Eric Simpson presented a line of march for the working class to take political power in his remarks at a candidates debate organized by Oaklandside, a widely read news website Feb. 26.
“I am a lifelong member of the Socialist Workers Party — an industrial worker and a trade unionist,” Simpson said in the one-minute introduction allowed each candidate.
“We need to understand the world to understand the bosses’ attacks on workers today. Their attacks come out of increased rivalries between imperialist powers,” he said. “The ruling-class solution to their economic crisis means social convulsions and a march toward expanding wars, toward World War III and a new Holocaust, the rise of Jew-hatred and fascism.
“What can stop that and open a new future for humanity? It is the working class. We are the only class that has no interest in exploitation,” Simpson said.
“A class break is needed to end the monopoly of politics by the billionaire families. We need a party of labor for all working people. The working class needs to take power, to create a new state built on solidarity and cooperation with struggles worldwide.”
Six other mayoral candidates took part in the debate. Unlike Simpson, each defended capitalist rule. A special election will take place April 15 to replace former Mayor Sheng Thao, who was recalled in November and faces charges of corruption. Simpson was alone among the candidates in calling for amnesty for immigrant workers living in the U.S. to advance unity among working people.
“The number one priority is to stand up against Jew-hatred,” he said. “My party protested the vandalizing and destruction of the big menorah at Lake Merritt a year and a half ago and stood in solidarity with the Chabad Jewish Center of Oakland when their windows were attacked last year.”
The SWP candidate got media attention, with KTVU-2 Fox News showing Simpson’s remarks.
San Francisco Chronicle senior political writer Joe Garofoli, however, wrote a scathing article criticizing Oaklandside for including all the candidates. He objected to Simpson, saying, “Every one of his answers Wednesday was a critique of the capitalist system.”
“I know we like to be inclusive in Oakland, but let’s cull the herd here,” he wrote. “Everyone knows this is a two-person race between former Rep. Barbara Lee and former City Council Member Loren Taylor.”
Simpson got a very different response from fellow unionists at the Ghirardelli chocolate factory where he works. Several had seen him on the morning news and congratulated him the next day. He’s finding serious interest in the SWP’s program and course more widely, talking with rail workers at the BNSF yard in Richmond and with working people on their doorsteps around Oakland.