In cities, towns and rural areas, Socialist Workers Party candidates and members are campaigning against the U.S. rulers’ wars in the Middle East and their assaults on workers at home. Discussion about how working people can fight against these attacks is at the heart of the eight-week campaign to sell 1,300 Militant subscriptions, the same number of books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries, and raise $165,000 for the annual Militant Fighting Fund. Members of the Communist Leagues in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom are part of the effort.
“I support what Trump is doing against Iran,” said Mike Wagner, a salesman and installer of window treatments, when Tony Lane, the SWP’s candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, and party member Candace Wagner knocked on his door in the Beechview neighborhood of Pittsburgh April 22.
“Washington’s war comes as competition is heating up with rival capitalist countries, most importantly China,” Lane said. “The U.S. rulers are marching us toward World War III. What our campaign points out is that the working class is the only force powerful enough to stop this by taking power ourselves and building a society based on human needs.”
“But we can’t get together, it won’t happen. We’re too divided,” Mike Wagner replied. Lane showed him the Militant’s coverage of the recent successful strike by 3,800 JBS slaughterhouse workers, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers, in Colorado. With members from countries around the world and speaking 57 languages, these workers came together and used union power to change the conditions they faced.
“That is impressive,” Mike Wagner said.
Candace Wagner explained that along with the U.S. war for plunder and domination in the Middle East, Israel is waging a defensive war against the Iranian regime, which vows to destroy Israel and kill the Jews there. Mike Wagner said he agreed and bought a copy of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
SWP joins fight to defend TPS
“We work hard and deserve respect and to keep our Temporary Protected Status,” Kenson Pierre, a house painter originally from Haiti, told Nelson Gonzalez, SWP candidate for governor of Florida, at a rally in North Miami April 26.
“The SWP demands an amnesty for all immigrants in this country,” Gonzalez said, “to unify our class as the crisis of capitalism bears down on us around the globe. The working class has every interest in overthrowing a system that is dragging humanity toward a third world war.”
Gonzalez said that the SWP is building a party capable of leading working people to take political power. Pierre bought a subscription to the Militant and a copy of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward to learn more.
In Lilburn, Georgia, Sam Manuel, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate, spoke at an April 26 rally to defend TPS. “This is not just an attack on immigrants,” Manuel told some 50 people there, mostly workers from Honduras. He pointed to the need to build a fighting movement that unites all workers, native- and foreign-born alike.
Manuel held up a copy of the book Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power. “It’s important to learn the lessons of the fight for Black rights. They said we would never end segregation. We proved them wrong.”
“I need to get this book,” Kevin Cruz, whose father was deported to Honduras, told Manuel after he spoke. He and his mother also signed up for a Militant subscription.
Cuba aids anti-colonial struggles
“I’m interested in this,” Don Precieux, a warehouse worker, told Joe Young, Communist League candidate in Quebec’s provincial election, and party member Katy LeRougetel, when they introduced him to the Militant April 25 as he changed his tires outside his friend’s house in Ottawa. They explained why the CL calls for U.S. and Canadian troops to get out of the Middle East.
Young showed Precieux, who is originally from Burundi, photos in Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa. The book provides a firsthand account of Cuba’s aid to that anti-colonial struggle. It “shows the kind of leadership the Cubans built. That’s why the imperialists are blockading Cuba today, to try to destroy its example,” Young said.
“Africans also went to other African countries to participate in liberation fights too,” Precieux said. He bought a Militant subscription along with the book and kicked in a few extra dollars for the Militant Fighting Fund.
To join in expanding the reach of the SWP and the Militant, contact distributors nearest you.