https://themilitant.com/2020/02/08/fight-to-win-workers-control-of-production/
ALYSON KENNEDY, SWP CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT
‘Fight to win workers control of production’
article
BY SETH GALINSKY
Vol. 84/No. 6
February 17, 2020
MILITANT/GERARDO SÁNCHEZ Alyson Kennedy, left, Socialist Workers Party
2020 presidential candidate, discusses SWP’s working-class campaign with
Valero
station worker Carol Ortega in Joshua, Texas, Feb. 4. figure
Alyson Kennedy, left, Socialist Workers Party 2020 presidential
candidate, discusses SWP’s working-class campaign with Valero station
worker Carol Ortega
in Joshua, Texas, Feb. 4.
MILITANT/GERARDO SÁNCHEZ Alyson Kennedy, left, Socialist Workers Party
2020 presidential candidate, discusses SWP’s working-class campaign with
Valero
station worker Carol Ortega in Joshua, Texas, Feb. 4. figure end
“I’ve watched a lot of State of the Union speeches by both Democratic
and Republican presidents,” Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party
candidate for
president, told the Militant from Dallas Feb. 5. “No matter what party
is in office, they try to convince working people we are all part of a
big happy
family with the capitalists, that we are all in this together.”
“But it’s not ‘our’ country, or ‘our’ government,” Kennedy said.
“Working people and the owners of big business have sharply counterposed
interests. They
exploit our labor at home and turn us into cannon fodder in their wars
to protect markets and exploitation abroad.
MILITANT/TONY LANE SWP vice presidential candidate Malcolm Jarrett
discusses the party’s platform with campaign endorser Melanie Meade, a
fighter against
pollution by U.S. Steel in Clairton, Pennsylvania. figure
SWP vice presidential candidate Malcolm Jarrett discusses the party’s
platform with campaign endorser Melanie Meade, a fighter against
pollution by U.S.
Steel in Clairton, Pennsylvania.
MILITANT/TONY LANE SWP vice presidential candidate Malcolm Jarrett
discusses the party’s platform with campaign endorser Melanie Meade, a
fighter against
pollution by U.S. Steel in Clairton, Pennsylvania. figure end
“They want to make as much profit as they can by keeping our wages as
low and the pace of production as fast as they can get away with.”
“On-the-job injuries are climbing. We need workers control over
production,” Kennedy said. “That’s a key part of our platform. It’s how
workers can defend
themselves on the job at the same time as we can begin to see that we
are capable of replacing the bosses and their government and run society
ourselves.”
“Working people cannot look to the White House, or Congress or any
capitalist politician to change the conditions we face,” Kennedy said.
“We have to build
a movement to fight for higher wages, better conditions and workers
control. To open the road to working people taking power and forming a
workers and
farmers government.
See directory to contact party campaign office nearest you. figure
02/candBox05
See directory to contact party campaign office nearest you. figure end
“That’s why our campaign says workers need their own party, a labor
party, and why we are proposing a fighting platform to go forward,” she
said.
Kennedy, her running mate Malcolm Jarrett, and SWP candidates for U.S.
Senate and other offices, are campaigning in cities and towns, large and
small,
talking to working people on their doorsteps.
On Feb. 4, Kennedy and Gerardo Sánchez, the party’s candidate for U.S.
Senate, teamed up to campaign in Joshua, Texas. They ran into Carol
Ortega as she
was coming home from work at her part-time job at a Valero gas station.
“Our party is a working-class party that believes the only way to change
the deteriorating conditions that we live every day is to stand up and
fight,”
Kennedy told her. “Our campaign backs every fight by workers for better
wages and working conditions, like the strike being waged today by
copper miners
against the Asarco bosses in Texas and Arizona.”
Socialist Workers Party launching campaign of Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm
Jarrett for president and vice president was featured in Feb. 5
“Frontburner”
column in D Magazine. The article quoted from press release announcing
Feb. 8 meeting launching the campaign in Dallas. “My campaign presents a
road forward
for working-class struggle to advance the self-confidence, fighting
capacities and class consciousness of working people,” Kennedy said. figure
Socialist Workers Party launching campaign of Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm
Jarrett for president and vice president was featured in Feb. 5
“Frontburner”
column in D Magazine. The article quoted from press release announcing
Feb. 8 meeting launching the campaign in Dallas. “My campaign presents a
road forward
for working-class struggle to advance the self-confidence, fighting
capacities and class consciousness of working people,” Kennedy said.
Socialist Workers Party launching campaign of Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm
Jarrett for president and vice president was featured in Feb. 5
“Frontburner”
column in D Magazine. The article quoted from press release announcing
Feb. 8 meeting launching the campaign in Dallas. “My campaign presents a
road forward
for working-class struggle to advance the self-confidence, fighting
capacities and class consciousness of working people,” Kennedy said.
figure end
Ortega told them she was facing hard times. When the “Affordable Care
Act” was first passed, she said, “I was able to get health insurance for
$78 a month
for me and my son, but now I pay $378 just for myself.” Kennedy showed her
The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record: Why Washington Fears Working
People,
a book by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, which describes how the
Clinton administration together with a Republican-controlled Congress
worked together
to end the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.
“I didn’t know about that,” Ortega said. “I always thought Clinton was a
good president.”
No matter which party is in the White House, Kennedy said, the president
is just the chief executive officer for the capitalist class. “Obama’s
‘affordable’
health care is just another program that benefits big capitalist
insurance companies. The Socialist Workers Party fights for universal,
government-guaranteed
cradle-to-grave health care, and retirement income for all.”
Ortega got a copy of the Militant and asked Kennedy and Sánchez to come
back after payday so she can get a subscription and some of the books by
party
leaders they showed her.
On Feb. 2, Kennedy campaigned with supporters at an apartment complex in
Richards, Texas, that had been hit by a tornado last October. Many
buildings still
had blue tarps on the roofs.
U.S. out of the Middle East!
“My campaign demands that Washington immediately withdraw every single
troop and all of its military weapons from the Middle East,” Kennedy
told Shakr
Ali, a cashier who emigrated to the U.S. from Yemen.
“I think the U.S. should stay because the Iranian government is so
bad,” Ali said, referring to Tehran’s intervention in Yemen, including
arming and organizing
militias.
“But the U.S. intervention there aims to defend the capitalists’
investments and markets, not the interests of working people,” Kennedy
said. “In fact,
their wars are an obstacle to us organizing and fighting there for more
control and better conditions.”
“The platform of the SWP is not designed to patch up the crisis-ridden
capitalist system, but to point a road forward for working people to
fight to protect
their interests against the brutal aggression of the bosses, their
political parties and their government.
“Working people in Yemen and Iran, just like in the U.S., need to gain
self-confidence and class consciousness in struggle to replace the
capitalist regimes
there,” Kennedy said.
SWP Campaign Coupon
Click here
to email Socialist Workers Party 2020 Campaign.
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