UNION CITY, N.J. — Washington’s wars are part of “a deliberate course to advance the bipartisan state policy of the U.S. ruling capitalist families,” Joanne Kuniansky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from New Jersey, told participants at an April 18 Militant Labor Forum here.
“They’re not a series of isolated events, nor the result of the actions of a deranged president,” Kuniansky said. The meeting took place during the closing weekend of a special three-week effort to win support to put on the ballot Kuniansky and Craig Honts, the SWP candidate for Congress in District 8.
Kuniansky and Honts were joined on the platform by Willie Cotton, SWP candidate for New York lieutenant governor, and Tony Lane, the party’s candidate for governor of Pennsylvania. They described the growing interest in the party among workers around the country.
By April 19, 2,633 people had signed to put Kuniansky on the ballot and 348 for Honts. The requirements are 2,000 and 250, respectively. SWP campaigners plan to gather 3,000 and 400 before filing the petitions next month.
“The capitalist rulers will perpetuate more wars,” Kuniansky told the meeting. “But workers will get our chance to take power out of their hands.
“The foundation for sweeping away the injustices inherent to this exploitive system can only be established when workers organize independently and fight to replace capitalist rule with a workers and farmers government.” The SWP exists “to prepare for these class battles to come.”
At a grocery store parking lot in Hillside, New Jersey, April 15, campaigners Arlene Rubinstein and Lisa Rottach spoke with Tawan Stephens. “With the soaring cost of gas, I couldn’t have picked a worse time to change careers!” Stephens, who is about to get his license to be a truck driver, told them. “Maybe the price will stabilize.”
“There is no stability in a system based on the unrelenting competition among ruling classes of rival capitalist powers,” Rubinstein said. This is also the source of their wars, she added.
“The war in the Mideast isn’t about bringing a brighter future to the people over there,” Stephens said. Washington “wants the resources and the oil.”
Rottach pointed out that Israel’s war to defend its existence as a refuge from Jew-hatred and pogroms is different from that of imperialist Washington. “Capitalism is the source of the world’s ills, not the Jews,” she said.
Stephens subscribed to the Militant, got the book The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class and signed to put the SWP candidates on the ballot.
Honts introduced his campaign to Juan and Heidy Constanza in South Plainfield April 18. “We need a workers government to overturn a system based on exploitation of workers at home and the rulers’ wars abroad,” he said. “There is nothing in this war for us,” Juan said.
When he mentioned that he drove a garbage truck, Honts said he’d joined the picket line of striking garbage workers at Republic in Boston last year. “I work at Republic here in New Jersey,” Juan Constanza exclaimed. “I know about that strike!
“After winning, workers in Boston now get paid $10 an hour more than workers in New Jersey,” he said. “Our contract comes up in the coming year. We’re getting ready to fight for more, just like they did.”
The Constanzas subscribed to the Militant and got two books by SWP leaders, Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes and In Defense of the US Working Class by Mary-Alice Waters.
At a parking lot in Linden, Rottach talked with Joao Amaral, a construction worker whose family moved to the U.S. from Portugal when he was 6.
Rottach showed him Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by Víctor Dreke. This book will help you appreciate the working-class, internationalist outlook of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution, she said. It provides a firsthand account of Cuba’s decisive aid to the victorious struggle that brought down Portuguese colonial rule.
Amaral signed the petition, subscribed to the Militant and bought Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde; The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by Barnes, Waters and Steve Clark; and Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning Under Capitalism by Barnes.