Help us put the Socialist Workers Party on the ballot!
https://themilitant.com/2020/07/18/help-us-put-the-socialist-workers-party-on-the-ballot/
BY RACHELE FRUIT
Vol. 84/No. 29
July 27, 2020
From left, Gerardo Sánchez, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from Texas;
Haley Swims and Keri Tankersley, electors in Louisiana for SWP
presidential ticket; and Rachele Fruit, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate
from Georgia. “I really want to see the SWP on the ballot,” Tankersley said.
MILITANT/HILDA CUZCO
From left, Gerardo Sánchez, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from Texas;
Haley Swims and Keri Tankersley, electors in Louisiana for SWP
presidential ticket; and Rachele Fruit, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate
from Georgia. “I really want to see the SWP on the ballot,” Tankersley said.
SHREVEPORT, La. — “After looking at the Militant, I really want to see
the Socialist Workers Party on the ballot in Louisiana,” Keri
Tankersley, a 24-year-old student in Monroe, an hour and a half east of
here, told party campaigners. “What can I do to help?”
Tankersley agreed to be an elector for Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm
Jarrett, SWP candidates for president and vice president. Campaigners
fanned out across the state July 11-13, recruiting the eight electors
needed to get on the ballot, one from each congressional district and
two at-large.
The Socialist Workers Party is the only party running in the 2020
elections that campaigns in defense of the interests of working people.
In addition to Louisiana, the party is already on the ballot in Colorado
and is fighting to win ballot status in five other states.
As the capitalist economic and social crisis deepens, the SWP is winning
a broad hearing building support for working-class struggles like the
strike by shipbuilders in Bath, Maine; calling for an emergency
government-funded public works program to provide millions of jobs; for
workers taking control of production where they work; and the need for
working people to build their own party, a labor party.
In southwest Shreveport, SWP campaigners met Kimberly Hatfield and her
companion, Rasheed Norman. “Right now, as far as jobs, people need
higher wages,” Norman said. “All my friends and family are working for
$7.25 an hour, and no one can pay bills on that. I make $100 a day, but
it’s hard work in the hot sun all day, doing landscaping.”
“What do you think we should do?” asked Gerardo Sánchez, SWP candidate
for U.S. Senate from Texas, campaigning for the presidential ticket.
“We could force them to raise the pay if we all stopped going to work,”
Norman said. “If you have a union, you can negotiate schedules, working
conditions, and they can’t do whatever they want to you.”
“Even where we don’t yet have a union, workers can unite and act
together like a union,” said Sánchez, who works at Walmart, where
workers also haven’t yet organized a union.
The 21-year-old Norman, who is Black, said that he has been stopped by
cops several times for no reason, leading to a discussion on how to end
police brutality.
Tommie McGlothen Jr., a 44-year-old Black man, died after he was beaten
by Shreveport police April 5. The beating, captured on cellphone videos
by witnesses, was covered up for two months by the cops. McGlothen’s
family and the Shreveport NAACP are demanding the firing of all officers
involved in his death or the cover-up.
Join fight against cop brutality
Kennedy, Jarrett and SWP candidates across the country have been active
in many of today’s fights against police brutality. They explain that
protests demanding the prosecution of the cops can push back police
violence. But the capitalist rulers will never stop using the cops and
their criminal “justice system” to defend their power and profits. To
end police brutality, they explain, workers need to fight in their
millions to end capitalist rule and bring to power a workers and farmers
government.
Sánchez showed Norman The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record by SWP
National Secretary Jack Barnes, which details why the prison population
saw its biggest growth in U.S. history under the Democratic
administration of Bill Clinton. Norman got the book and a subscription
to the Militant, and Hatfield signed up to be an elector.
Irina McAllister, a retired worker from New Orleans, also signed up.
“The SWP is the only working-class alternative. The party offers a real
working-class program that you can read about every week in the
Militant newspaper,” she said.
While in New Orleans, Socialist Workers Party campaigners met with a
dozen striking sanitation workers and their supporters to extend
solidarity and to discuss how to win more support for their fight.
Employed by a New Orleans subcontractor, the “hoppers,” as they are
called, have been on strike since May 5.
‘Need union to stand up to bosses’
Strike leader Darnell Harris thanked the campaign supporters for coming
by to learn more about their fight. “Without a union I don’t see how
it’s possible for workers to effectively stand up to the companies,” he
said. “We get $10.25 per hour, the minimum in the city. We get no
benefits. They had us working for 80 hours per week and we still
couldn’t turn overtime down.
“Work clothes? We don’t get any — even though we spend all week throwing
garbage in the hot sun,” Harris said. “Work gloves? A few of us who line
up extra early might get some cloth garden gloves, if we’re lucky. Sick
pay? Don’t even ask. These are some of the reasons why a union matters
so much to us.”
Several workers leafed through photos in the book Malcolm X, Black
Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Barnes, including one of
the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike where picketers carried signs saying
“I am a man,” a slogan the strikers have put on their picket signs.
The Socialist Workers Party has run a presidential slate in every
election since 1948. In Vermont last month, campaigners signed up the
electors needed to get on the ballot, after the state government
suspended petitioning requirements because their shutdown orders due to
coronavirus made them impossible.
Join campaign to put SWP on ballot
In Washington state, the SWP successfully placed Henry Dennison on the
ballot for governor after the state waived petitioning and filing fee
requirements because of the lockdown there. The campaign and its
attorney are urging the state government to do the same for the party’s
presidential slate, and is campaigning to tell workers about the party
and its fight to get on the ballot.
Government-enforced restrictions imposed under the banner of combating
coronavirus have made it virtually impossible to meet petitioning
requirements in many other states where the SWP has been on the ballot
for decades, including in New Jersey and Minnesota, and in Tennessee,
where the party has been on the ballot five times since 1976.
In those states the campaign has retained legal counsel and urged state
officials to waive the requirements. It is organizing support from
fellow workers, supporters of political rights, anyone who wants to see
the working-class alternative on the ballot.
In Washington, D.C., Omari Musa is the Socialist Workers Party candidate
for delegate to the House of Representatives. District officials lowered
the requirement for ballot status from 3,000 signatures to 250. Campaign
supporters had already collected 250 signatures as of July 15, toward
their goal of over 500, more than double the requirement. Stepped-up
campaigning is set for the weekend of July 18, to complete the drive.
Anyone who wants to volunteer can contact the D.C. campaign at (202)
536-5080.
In many states Democratic Party officials are doing anything possible to
keep the SWP off the ballot, fearing it could win votes and threaten
their party’s chances in 2020. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an
executive order significantly raising the number of signatures to put
independent parties on the ballot, to 30,000.
Steve Warshell contributed to this article from New Orleans.
No worker has to die on the job! For workers control of production
Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for president, issued
the following statement July 15. Malcolm Jarrett is the party’s
candidate for vice president. A fight by workers and our unions to wrest
control of production and safety from the bosses…
Socialist Workers Party 2020 campaign platform
This is the SWP’s fighting campaign platform to confront the economic,
social and moral crisis caused by capitalism: UNIONS/FOR A LABOR PARTY
Support workers’ struggles to organize to defend themselves, to use
union power on behalf of ourselves and all…
Front Page Articles
Bath shipyard strike against union busting needs support!
Workers fight boss attacks on jobs, wages, conditions
No worker has to die on the job! For workers control of production
Help us put the Socialist Workers Party on the ballot!
Join protests for prosecution of cops who killed Breonna Taylor!
Defense of free speech, debate met with slander and threats of reprisal
Feature Articles
Columbus voyage to Americas opened door to social progress
Scientific approach to opening of ‘New World’
Also In This Issue
Nurses on strike in Joliet: ‘We can set an example’
US execution: ‘Brutal weapon in hands of capitalist rulers’
More coverage to come on Asarco strike and the solidarity it won...
Montreal longshoremen strike over unsafe schedules
Books of the Month
Che: ‘Moncada attack was beginning of Cuba’s revolution’
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Corrections
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Richard Dawkins
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all
decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this
sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running
for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from
within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation,
thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this
very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the
natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons
and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people
are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find
any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has
precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
