“To make lasting change we need to change which class rules,” Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, told 90 people at an April 21 candidates debate hosted by the Fort Worth Tarrant County NAACP and the Faith and Justice Coalition of Tarrant County. The meeting took place at the Carter Metropolitan CME Church in the largely African American Southside neighborhood.
“Working people need to break with the Democratic and Republican parties and chart a road to take political power ourselves,” she said. “We need a government based on working-class solidarity, not capitalist profit.”
Kennedy described joining the picket lines of striking Teamsters at Molson Coors in Fort Worth and the United Auto Workers in Arlington. “Today’s increase in strikes and other social struggles is important,” she said. “That’s where workers begin to gain confidence that we can change our conditions.” More workers become interested in discussing the SWP’s political course forward.
The candidates were asked about the scourge of homelessness and shortage of affordable housing. “If we don’t start from the world, we’re not going to understand what is ruining the conditions of working people here,” said Hilda Cuzco, SWP candidate for City Council District 11. Sharpening conflicts for markets and resources are driving the U.S. capitalists and their rivals to step up assaults on workers’ wages, jobs and working conditions.
“All housing under capitalism is built for profit,” Cuzco pointed out, “not to satisfy human needs.”
Kennedy explained the SWP’s call for a union-led fight for a federally funded public works program to put millions back to work at union-scale pay to build the houses, hospitals and many other things working people desperately need. The proposal offers a way to combat the rising competition workers face to get a job at wages you can live on.
Candidates were also asked what they’d do to defend immigrants in Fort Worth. Josh Lucas, who is running in the “nonpartisan” election and says he’s a Democrat, called for the appointment of a new police chief to counter the harassment of immigrants.
In contrast, Kennedy said the defense of immigrant workers in the U.S. was a key question for working people as a whole, essential for overcoming divisions the bosses try to foster. She urged participants to get involved in fights against deportations, highlighting the union support won by the family of SMART union sheet metal apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They’re demanding the government bring him back after mistakenly deporting him to El Salvador.
SWP candidates will be joining actions across the country on International Workers Day, May 1. They’ll be presenting the party’s program, including proposals aimed at advancing working-class unity, like the demand for an amnesty for workers in the U.S. without papers.
After the debate, one long-time Democratic Party supporter subscribed to the Militant and told the SWP candidates he was going to vote for them.
Campaigning for SWP candidates has gone side by side with the eight-week international effort to expand the readership of the Militant and get out books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries, and raise $165,000 for the paper.
The books describe lessons learned in the course of previous working-class struggles and present a road forward today. Five weeks in, members of the SWP and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K. have sold 866 subscriptions to the paper and 1,119 books toward the goal of 1,300 of each.
Militant Fighting Fund
Party members are winning contributions toward the Militant Fighting Fund.
“Thanks to the Militant, I’ve been able to keep informed about what is going on in the world of labor,” wrote Curtis Roessler, a postal worker from Connecticut, after contributing to the fund. “Corporate American media simply doesn’t want to report on strikes and other important labor issues. The place to find this is the Militant!”
“I made a donation to the Militant, because I believe access to factual news and history should be at the forefront of the media,” wrote Nicole Barnett, the owner of Rubber Rose Books & Print bookstore in Kankakee, Illinois. “I feel honored to be a facilitator to keep the Militant going, hopefully for many years to come.”
The Militant is entirely funded by contributions from working people.
“We’ll go over on our $15,000 fund goal,” Betsey Stone, organizer of the SWP branch in Oakland, California, told the Militant April 25. “Why are we getting such a good response? World politics is changing.
“Many working people can sense the growing threat of more wars, underlining what the SWP has always said — the only road forward for workers is to replace capitalist rule with a government of our own,” she said. “Keeping the Militant coming out is indispensable to building the kind of party that can make that possible.”
To join in campaigning for the SWP candidates, contact the party branch nearest you.
Josefina Otero in Fort Worth contributed to this article.
