Minnesota SWP campaign joins debate over how to fight cop brutality
https://themilitant.com/2021/04/24/minnesota-swp-campaign-joins-debate-over-how-to-fight-cop-brutality/
BY MARY MARTIN
Vol. 85/No. 17
May 3, 2021
Gerardo Sánchez, right, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Dallas
City Council District 1, talks with UAW members Mitchell Vickery, left,
and Chris Hodge, UAW Local 3057 president, on picket line at Prysmian
Group in East Texas April 19. Over 200 unionists are striking for better
working conditions. Bosses “don’t take into consideration that we are
human beings,” Hodge said. SWP candidates campaign to build support for
union battles.
MILITANT/HILDA CUZCO
Gerardo Sánchez, right, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Dallas
City Council District 1, talks with UAW members Mitchell Vickery, left,
and Chris Hodge, UAW Local 3057 president, on picket line at Prysmian
Group in East Texas April 19. Over 200 unionists are striking for better
working conditions. Bosses “don’t take into consideration that we are
human beings,” Hodge said. SWP candidates campaign to build support for
union battles.
MINNEAPOLIS — Doug Nelson, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor
of Minneapolis, and SWP campaign supporters have been fanning out,
bringing solidarity to labor battles, speaking out against police
brutality and exchanging views with workers on their doorsteps about the
need for working people to break with the capitalist parties, the
Democrats and Republicans, and forge their own party, a labor party.
Nelson and campaign supporters visited the Marathon Petroleum workers
picket line in St. Paul Park April 18 to extend solidarity with their
fight. Nelson discussed with strikers how important it was that their
union, Teamsters Local 120, joined the vigil for Daunte Wright in nearby
Brooklyn Center, after he was killed by police there April 11.
On April 17 SWP campaign supporters participated in two rallies opposing
police brutality. One was organized at the site where Wright was shot
down, where community groups put up tables and various speakers
addressed the crowd. The Socialist Workers Party campaign was well
received. Dozens of people took campaign literature and 10 bought books
by SWP and other revolutionary leaders, including three copies of
Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack
Barnes, national secretary of the SWP.
That same day campaign supporters participated in a rally of 300 called
by the NAACP at the Hennepin County Government Center, where the trial
of Derek Chauvin, the cop who killed George Floyd, was held. Warehouse
worker Mike Biskui discussed with campaign supporter Nick Neeser how
police target workers. “This system and the police go right to the use
of force if you don’t do what they tell you,” Biskui said, “or even if
you do what they tell you.”
Rick Prez, a restaurant worker, told Neeser he came to the rally because
“it’s important to me. I want to talk about why the government is
corrupt, how they don’t care about their homeless. They only care about
the rich and the big corporations.”
“The Republicans and Democrats are the same party,” he added. “Joe Biden
and Kamala Harris aren’t to be trusted any more than anyone before them.”
That’s why the Socialist Workers Party points to the need for workers to
break from the Democrats and Republicans and build a labor party, Neeser
said, based on fighting unions.
Nelson spoke to a packed Militant Labor Forum April 17 in St. Paul on
“How to Fight Police Brutality: It’s Class Against Class, Not Simply
Race Against Race.”
Nelson described the labor battles and social struggles he is
participating in as part of the national slate of SWP candidates.
“Workers ask us what these struggles have to do with socialism and where
is all this going?” Nelson said. He pointed to the example of the Cuban
Revolution led by Fidel Castro, which showed that to put an end to
police brutality and all the other scourges of capitalism it’s necessary
to take power out of the hands of the capitalist class and bring to
power a government of workers and farmers.
On April 18 the SWP campaign had a table at “Black and Yellow: Asian
Solidarity Rally, Dedicated to Daunte” held at George Floyd Square.
Their table was surrounded as soon as it was set up by participants
wanting to talk about how to fight racism and police brutality.
Nelson joined campaign supporters to attend one of the nightly protests
at the Brooklyn Center police station to protest the killing of Wright.
He was asked where he stood on “defunding the police.”
“The idea that giving the police more training or less money will end
police brutality avoids the reality of what the police are and their
function under capitalism,” Nelson said, “which is to keep the working
class in line. We have to replace the entire system.”
To get involved in campaigning with the SWP, contact the nearest party
branch.
Front Page Articles
Build support for striking miners and steelworkers!
Jury finds the cop who killed George Floyd guilty
USW wins solidarity in strike against ATI bosses
Washington says will pull out of 20-year Afghan war
NY event hails Cuban literacy drive, Bay of Pigs victories
Minnesota SWP campaign joins debate over how to fight cop brutality
Feature Articles
Cut workweek with no pay cut to save jobs!
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Help ‘Militant’ win new readers, raise $145,000!
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SWP: ‘The people of West Papua deserve support!’
Seattle: Stop Philippines gov’t killing labor activists
UK Uber drivers discuss how to advance fight for a union
Rally backs locked-out Shell oil workers in Quebec
Locked-out Marathon Petroleum workers stand strong
Message from María de los Ángeles Vázquez for the New York commemoration
of the 60th anniversary of the Cuban victory at Playa Girón
Myanmar junta targets union, protest leaders
On the Picket Line
Ontario aerospace workers strike over wages, conditions
25, 50 and 75 years ago
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Carl Sagan “It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance
between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all
hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great
openness to new ideas. Obviously those two modes of thought are in some
tension. But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes,
whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble. If you are only skeptical,
then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new.
You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the
world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now
and then, maybe once in a hundred cases, a new idea turns out to be on
the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being
skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and
either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and
progress. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility
and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot
distinguish the useful as from the worthless ones.” ― Carl Sagan
