https://themilitant.com/2019/02/16/amnesty-for-immigrants-in-us-unify-the-working-class/
‘Amnesty for immigrants in US, unify the working class’
SWP takes campaign to workers’ doorsteps
By Roy Landersen
Vol. 83/No. 8
February 25, 2019
Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Dallas mayor,
speaks at Feb. 12 candidates’ debate, campaigns at workers’ doors
throughout area.
Militant photos: Top, George Chalmers; inset, Ned Measel
Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Dallas mayor,
speaks at Feb. 12 candidates’ debate, campaigns at workers’ doors
throughout area.
Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Dallas,
turned in over 700 signatures and was told Feb. 7 that she was on the
ballot.
Her supporters are taking advantage of this victory to reach more
broadly, knocking on doors in working-class neighborhoods in cities and
small towns in the region. Some of those who’ve met Kennedy have joined
on campaigning trips to help spread the word about the party’s program.
After supporters of Kennedy’s campaign went door to door to talk with
workers they stopped at a Chili’s restaurant in Dallas to get something
to eat. They met Devion Linthecome-Darden, who works there as a waiter.
Since the restaurant was slow, he joined their political discussion and
decided to get involved in the campaign. He’s since gone door-to-door
campaigning for Kennedy in Dallas.
“I joined the campaign,” he told SWP Dallas campaign manager George
Chalmers, “because I feel like capitalism affects most people
negatively, and the ones who benefit from it either don’t care or they
actively want to affect people negatively to benefit themselves more.”
“This is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed,” he said.
He bought all six books advertised below, including the new book In
Defense of the US Working Class by Socialist Workers Party leader
Mary-Alice Waters. And he subscribed to the Militant.
Mathias Vazquez, a retail co-worker of one of the SWP campaigners, also
volunteered to join the door-to-door campaigning and accompanied Kennedy
to a recent candidates forum. Before moving to Dallas he was a veteran
of the peasants’ fight for land in Mexico.
Joseph, a young electrician, emailed Kennedy after he read an article
about the SWP campaign in the Dallas Morning News. He had coffee with
Kennedy and her campaign manager, subscribed to the Militant and bought
In Defense of the US Working Class and Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and
the Road to Workers Power by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes. He
joined a door to door campaign team in northwest Dallas, and met a
house cleaner attracted to the politics of the SWP campaign who decided
to get a copy of In Defense of the US Working Class.
After campaigning, Joseph got two more books — The Clintons’
Anti-Working-Class Record; and Are they Rich Because They’re Smart?
Kennedy, the only working-class candidate, debated Feb. 12 with veterans
of the Dallas capitalist establishment who make up the rest of the
mayoral candidates. Some 200 people attended the panel event at the
Texas Theatre, sponsored by the League of United Latin American Citizens
— one of the oldest and largest Latino organizations in the United
States — and ECO Latino Radio.
Debate with capitalist opponents
When they were asked what each had to say about immigration, Kennedy
replied that her campaign was fighting for amnesty for all those in the
U.S. without papers the authorities consider sufficient. Amnesty is in
the interests of the whole working class, she said, and would help
workers build unity and solidarity to fight against attacks from the
bosses and their government. It’s a fight working people can win, she said.
Seth Galinsky, SWP candidate for New York City Public Advocate, talks
with restaurant worker Jason Bryant at his home in Cobleskill, New York,
Feb. 2. Introducing the party to working people on their doorsteps and
discussing how to defend working class is central activity of party.
Militant/Maggie Trowe
Seth Galinsky, SWP candidate for New York City Public Advocate, talks
with restaurant worker Jason Bryant at his home in Cobleskill, New York,
Feb. 2. Introducing the party to working people on their doorsteps and
discussing how to defend working class is central activity of party.
Kennedy pointed to how millions of workers, mainly Mexicans but many
others, went into the streets in 2006 and defeated the Sensenbrenner
bill. The bill would have made it a crime for anyone to assist someone
without papers. “In Dallas, half a million people demonstrated on May
Day that year,” she said.
The SWP candidate called for the conviction and jailing of Amber Guyger,
the Dallas cop who killed Botham Jean last September in his apartment.
“We have to keep protesting on this,” she said to applause.
Sitting alongside several candidates who represent real estate or
related business interests, Kennedy described how she meets workers
while campaigning door to door. Many said that “as property taxes got
too high, they were forced to sell out.” And then, “real estate brokers
moved in to build luxury apartments and houses and made a killing.”
As a Walmart worker getting $11 an hour, Kennedy explained why a lot of
people can’t survive except by working two or three jobs. The SWP is
part of the fight for at least a $15 minimum wage, and more.
Kennedy said there was an alternative to the deprivations imposed on
working people by the crisis of capitalism, and explained how workers
and farmers in Cuba rose up and took political power into their own
hands in 1959, making a socialist revolution that stands tall today.
She invited people to join the May Day International Volunteer Work
Brigade to Cuba that runs from April 21 to May 5 to see the Cuban
Revolution for themselves. After the meeting, four young
African-Americans came up to meet her, saying, “Miss Kennedy, that was
great!” Three of them have signed up for more information about going on
the May Day brigade.
Linthecome-Darden, who SWP campaigners had met at Chili’s earlier, also
came to the debate to help with the campaign table there, displaying a
range of books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries. He said that
both he and his roommate, who works at the same restaurant, are
interested in going on the May Day brigade.
She ‘wants to start a revolution’
“Dallas Mayoral Candidate Alyson Kennedy Wants to Start the Revolution”
was the headline of an interview published in the “Frontburner” column
in the online and print publication, D Magazine.
Interviewer Shawn Shinneman explained Kennedy had also been the SWP’s
2016 presidential candidate and in 2019 the party is “arranging for
candidates to run on its platform in 10 states.”
“We live in a class-divided society,” Kennedy told the magazine, “an
economic system, capitalism,” that doesn’t meet “the needs of the vast
majority and never will meet the needs of the vast majority because it’s
a system that’s based on making profits for a tiny minority. Our party
is part of the fights by working people and has been for many years.
“We have confidence that in the coming years we’re going to see bigger
struggles by workers and farmers for our rights and to change our
conditions,” she continued. “We will build the kind of movement in this
country that will take political power for our side, and reorganize and
build a new kind of society. A society that’s capable of meeting the
needs of the vast majority.”
The full interview can be viewed at:
https://www.prestonhollowpeople.com/2019/02/07/former-presidential-candidate-runs-for-dallas-mayor/.
If you’d like to find out more about the SWP or get involved in the
campaign, contact the party branch nearest you listed here.
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Carl Sagan
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind
and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says
everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the
fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
― Carl Sagan
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