‘We need our own party, a labor party’

Vol. 84/No. 10 - March 16, 2020
Retiree Ernest Williams, left, in North Long Beach Feb. 27, tells SWP candidate for vice president Malcolm Jarrett, right, and campaigner Bernie Senter that half his pension goes for medical expenses. SWP calls for government-guaranteed cradle-to-grave health care, Jarrett said.

LOS ANGELES — The Socialist Workers Party candidates for president and vice president, Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett, campaigned among workers at the Farmer John pork processing plant here Feb. 28 during shift change. “It’s good you’re here in the…


‘Workers need to rely on themselves in fight for safety’

Vol. 84/No. 10 - March 16, 2020

OAKLAND, Calif. — Joel Britton, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Congress in the 13th District here, campaigned Feb. 29 in West Oakland, where trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent linked to increased cancer risk, has been found in the groundwater under McClymonds…


SWP candidates tell Asarco strikers, ‘We’ll tell your story’

Vol. 84/No. 10 - March 16, 2020
From left, Asarco strikers Reuben Barragan, Raul Duarte; SWP presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy, Leslie Dork, SWP candidate Dennis Richter at Hayden, Arizona, picket line, compare Asarco fight with 2003-05 strike that Kennedy participated in at the Co-Op coal mine in Utah.

HAYDEN, Ariz. — During a solidarity  trip Feb. 23-25, Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for president, discussed politics and the labor movement today with striking copper miners. She learned more about their fight against Asarco’s union-busting to share with…


As capitalist crisis deepens, workers need control of production

Vol. 84/No. 10 - March 16, 2020
As part of carrying out their revolution, Cuban workers took control of production in the factories and on the land. Above, workers at Havana dairy factory meet in 1994, joining the national debate over how to reorganize production to address shortages in Cuban economy.

The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working Class Politics and the Trade Unions by Jack Barnes is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for March. Since the mid-1970s, Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, has led the…


Crisis deepens in Democratic party in fight over nominee

Vol. 84/No. 8 - March 2, 2020

The crisis wracking the Democratic Party is escalating amid debate over selecting a candidate capable of preventing what the party considers “unthinkable” — President Donald Trump winning reelection in November. And their debate over what kind of ideology to run…


SWP campaign: Back workers’ fights for better wages, working conditions

Vol. 84/No. 8 - March 2, 2020
Dennis Richter, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Congress in California, discusses party’s working-class program with dental assistant Mayra Mejía in Lathrop Feb. 16.

LATHROP, Calif. — Socialist Workers Party candidates campaigning for the party’s national ticket headed by Alyson Kennedy for U.S. president and Malcolm Jarrett for vice president are talking with workers about the party’s platform to confront the economic, social and…


SWP candidate talks program with Black farmers in Georgia

Vol. 84/No. 8 - March 2, 2020
Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Georgia, talks to Kevin Stanley, a U.S. Army veteran and peanut farmer. Stanley agreed with Fruit that what matters in the elections is which class interests a party represents and which class holds political power.

ALBANY, Ga. — One of the largest workshops at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives 37th annual conference here Feb. 13-14 discussed the challenges Black farmers face in keeping land they inherited from parents or grandparents who had not left wills…


Workers donate ‘blood money’ bribes to build SWP

Vol. 83/No. 48 - December 30, 2019

Enclosed is a check for $35.83 that I discovered on my Walmart check stub,” wrote Anthony Dutrow from Miami, “no doubt some kind of holiday ‘gift’ and no doubt ‘blood money.’ “This was one of the many things they’ve thrown…


Welcome new readers! Help get out books, the ‘Militant’

Vol. 83/No. 47 - December 23, 2019
SWP member Leroy Watson, right, talks to Joshoa Gantile on his doorstep in Hometown, Illinois, Dec. 8. SWP says workers need to build a labor party to defend our class interests.

The Militant extends a warm welcome to the 1,208 readers who subscribed to the paper during the Socialist Workers Party fall drive to win new readers that concluded Dec. 10. Party members also raised over $100,000 for the party’s annual…


‘Teamsters union treated owner-drivers as fellow workers’

Vol. 83/No. 45 - December 9, 2019
Truck drivers picket in Wilmington, California, Sept. 9, demanding NFI company bosses treat them as workers, not “contractors.” Farrell Dobbs explains how owner-operators, loaded by debt, are also exploited workers.

Teamster Politics by Farrell Dobbs is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for November. It is the third volume of a four-part series on the history of that union during the giant labor battles of the 1930s. Dobbs emerged…