OAKLAND, Calif. — The Socialist Workers Party spring campaign to introduce working people to the party’s 2025 candidates, expand the readership of the Militant, get out books on revolutionary working-class politics, and raise contributions to the Militant Fighting Fund gets underway March 22.
Eric Simpson, the party’s candidate for mayor of Oakland, joined the picket lines of 1,500 striking members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265 in San Jose March 16. He’s also spoken at three candidates’ debates and is campaigning in working-class neighborhoods throughout the region.
At a March 15 forum at City Hall sponsored by the League of Women Voters, Simpson explained the SWP is involved in today’s labor and social struggles. The party presents a road forward for workers to take power from the capitalist class and into our own hands, he said, in order to end the capitalists’ drive toward economic and social catastrophe and another world war.
After hearing Simpson speak, two workers came by the SWP campaign table and subscribed to the Militant.
A number of union members at the Ghirardelli chocolate factory where Simpson works in San Leandro are following his campaign. El Tímpano, a news website that serves the large East Bay Mexican and Guatemalan communities, wrote that Simpson campaigns “for amnesty” for undocumented immigrant workers in the U.S. to strengthen the working class.
The SWP and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K. are organizing to win 1,300 people to subscribe to the Militant, get out the same number of books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries, and raise $165,000 for the Militant Fighting Fund. The books recount the history and lessons from decades of working-class struggles that are vital for working people today.
“What is going on in this world?” student Natty Assefa asked Communist League campaigner Jonathan Silberman when Silberman knocked on his door in London March 15. “From what I’ve seen, the problem in the Middle East is that Hamas keeps attacking Jews.”
Silberman showed him The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class. He pointed to a section of the book that describes how the forerunners of Hamas collaborated with the Nazis to try to extend their Holocaust in World War II to the Middle East.
“Everybody needs to know about this,” Assefa said. He got the book and a subscription.
In New Jersey, supporters of Joanne Kuniansky, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor, are signing up 3,200 people to get the SWP candidate on the ballot, well over the requirement.
“The wars unfolding today are heading toward another worldwide imperialist slaughter,” Craig Honts, SWP candidate for lieutenant governor, told a retired nurse when he knocked on her door in East Orange March 16. “Conflicts between rival capitalists are the source of the attacks coming down on workers’ living standards,” he said.
She told Honts she was fortunate to have a pension, but her mother doesn’t and is struggling to get by. She signed to put Kuniansky on the ballot and got a copy of the Militant.
To get involved in the SWP campaigns, contact the party branch nearest you. Contributions to the Militant Fighting Fund can be made online at www.themilitant.com.