http://themilitant.com/2016/8028/802803.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 28 August 1, 2016
(front page)
‘Join us,’ says Socialist Workers Party candidate
BY JOHN STUDER
BURLINGTON, Vt. — “Workers need a revolutionary party to organize to
lead the fight for working-class political power, and that’s what we
are.” That’s what people here heard Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers
Party candidate for U.S. vice president, say when they tuned into the
local NBC evening news July 15.
“No matter who is elected Nov. 8, the ruling rich will continue to try
to make working people pay for the crisis of capitalism,” said Hart at a
press conference outside Burlington City Hall that morning. “A deeper
economic, moral and political catastrophe is coming, more wars in more
countries,” until the working class is able to replace their rule, he said.
Hart was joined by Jacob Perasso, a rail worker who is the SWP candidate
for U.S. Senate in New York and one of the organizers of a team of
supporters going door to door across Vermont. In the course of
campaigning for the party, more than 1,800 people signed to put the SWP
ticket on the ballot.
Some people they met joined in. Perasso and other supporters knocked on
Yam Tiwani’s door in Winooski. He got a subscription to the Militant,
and then took them down to the nearby soap plant where he works to meet
some of his co-workers on their break.
“In Vermont, the laws are stacked against working-class parties,”
Perasso told the press. “It’s simply not credible that so many of the
workers we’ve talked to in their homes and on their doorsteps are not
being counted as valid,” referring to the rejection of many signatures
by town clerks across the state.
“Of the 789 signatures submitted to nine clerks, they have validated
349, or 44 percent,” Attorney Paul Gillies, representing the SWP, wrote
to Vermont Secretary of State James Condos July 14. “This number doesn’t
make sense on the doorstep of peoples’ homes and apartments.”
“I want to represent the people who signed the petitions for the
Socialist Workers Party,” Dorothy Coe de Hernandez, a retired teacher,
told the press. “Any party that gets 1,800 signatures should be put on
the ballot. This upsets me!”
When Hart, Perasso, Coe and other supporters got in line to hand in
their petitions, with the press in tow, Jared Carter, a professor at the
Vermont Law School waiting to pay some taxes, asked what was going on.
“If the signatures of a bunch of people who signed your petition are
being rejected, that’s terrible,” Carter told them. “That means they’re
being disenfranchised. But the right to vote for who you want is
fundamental to the Bill of Rights.”
The Burlington Free Press covered the campaign in a July 18 article
headlined, “Socialist Workers Party seeks new recruits in Vermont.”
Vermont Public Radio also reported on the party’s news conference.
After filing their petitions, supporters went back to campaigning across
the state.
In addition to meeting a number of workers who want to get involved in
future party campaigning in Vermont, over the last month supporters sold
216 copies of Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Pathfinder Press’ new
book by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes, and 127
subscriptions to the Militant.
Another round of campaigning in Vermont is being planned in coming
weeks, including a return visit to the soap plant, as the SWP collects
their petitions from town clerks to present to the Secretary of State
before the Aug. 1 deadline.
Related articles:
Workers need own party, independent of the bosses
‘Capitalist crisis is going to get worse’
SWP tells workers, ‘Our party is your party’
Conference presents road forward in face of irresolvable crisis of world
capitalism
Join the Socialist Workers Party campaigning
Are they rich because they’re smart?
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