http://themilitant.com/2015/7941/794102.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 41 November 16, 2015
(lead article)
‘Our victory is that workers
get a voice’ in 2015 election
BY CHRIS HOEPPNER
PHILADELPHIA — “This is great! I’ve never had socialists knock on my
door,” Michelle Thompson told John Staggs, Socialist Workers Party
candidate for City Council at-large, in the Port Richmond neighborhood
here Nov. 1. Staggs and Osborne Hart, SWP candidate for mayor, are on
the ballot in the Nov. 3 election.
The SWP candidates have gotten widespread media coverage, appeared in
numerous candidates’ debates, joined union picket lines and protests
against cop brutality and talked to workers on their doorsteps. They’ve
sought to put every political question in a class framework, and promote
working-class solutions.
Katie Colaneri, a reporter for WHYY public radio and its associated
Newsworks website, accompanied the socialist candidates as they knocked
on workers’ doors in the Mayfair area in Northeast Philadelphia. “The
working class neighborhood is home to just the kind of voters they’re
targeting,” Colaneri wrote Oct. 26.
She asked Hart what the SWP would accomplish through the campaign. “Our
victory is that working people get a voice in the elections,” Hart
answered.
The party has been asking workers to join a Nov. 10 rally at 3:30 p.m.
at City Hall organized by fast-food workers, Walmart workers and many
others demanding $15 an hour, regular full-time schedules and a union.
Hart works as an overnight stocker at Walmart and Staggs works a cash
register at a different store.
“Yes, I support the fight for $15 an hour — but the minimum wage should
be at least $20 an hour,” Sean Wright, a construction worker, told
campaign supporter Janet Post on his doorstep in Port Richmond Nov. 1.
“The hardest thing about working at McDonald’s was the terrible pay,”
Elizabeth Wilcox, who worked there 30 years, told Post. She said that
she will try to go to the Nov. 10 demonstration because to win $15 an
hour “will take a fight.”
“A lifelong supporter of black people’s rights, he [Hart] was a
participant in the July 24-26 Black Lives Matter national conference in
Cleveland,” said a Newsworks 2015 Philadelphia Voters Guide. “He also
supports a woman’s right to have an abortion, has marched and spoken out
in support of undocumented workers in Philadelphia, Norristown and
southern New Jersey, and has joined protests and rallies against public
school funding cuts.
“Staggs has been using his Council campaign to support Verizon workers
and ATI steelworkers in their contract fights,” the voting guide said.
“Staggs is also an opponent of U.S. wars he calls imperialist — in
Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere — and he supports the
revolutionary government in Cuba as an example for all working people.”
“Working people need to organize a movement to form our own political
party, a labor party based on the unions that can take the reins of
power out of the hands of big business,” Staggs told those attending an
Oct. 27 candidates’ meeting sponsored by the Committee of 70, Young
Involved Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Citizen.
Grandille Crothers, who has worked at ArcelorMittal’s steel mill in
Coatesville since 1966, told campaign supporter Mitchel Rosenberg Nov. 2
that he backs the SWP’s efforts to promote the fight for a labor party.
“I’m all for it. Sooner or later somebody has to stand up for the
working man,” Crothers said.
ArcelorMittal and U.S. Steel are demanding deep concession contracts in
negotiations with the Steelworkers union. The SWP candidates have joined
Steelworkers’ actions in defense of the union at ArcelorMittal plants in
both Coatesville and Conshohocken.
When the topic at an “All Candidates Night” Oct. 28 sponsored by The
Chew and Belfield Neighbors Club turned to police brutality quite a
discussion broke out on how to end police killings.
Rev. Chester Williams, club president and the moderator, said that the
cops should be trained to shoot so that they don’t kill.
Jim Foster, an independent candidate for mayor, said he thought cops
should be trained to take someone down without shooting at all.
Hart said he joined family members in public protests against the
killings of Frank McQueen and Brandon Tate-Brown and the brutal beating
of Tyree Carroll by the cops.
“It isn’t a question of training the police better,” he said. “The
police defend the interests of the employers, the ruling class. Working
people, the majority in society, need to mobilize to take power out of
the hands of the capitalists and put it in our hands — that is the
solution.”
The SWP candidates are inviting workers to hear Kenia Serrano and Leima
Martínez, leaders of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the
Peoples, Nov. 7 in Washington, D.C., to learn about what workers and
farmers in Cuba have been able to accomplish with their own government.
And they’re building the Nov. 10 rally for $15 and a union.
“Unity is what it’s all about, sticking together. You got my vote,”
Kevin Foreman, a 39-year-old forklift operator and member of the
Teamsters, told Hart at his front door in Port Richmond. “I support the
$15 minimum wage. I’ll read the Militant, but I want you to come back
and talk after the Tuesday election.”
“I’ll be here,” Hart said. “The SWP doesn’t just run in elections, we’re
a 365-day-a-year political party.”
Related articles:
Capitalist crisis, attacks on workers mark Canadian vote
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