SWP 2020 campaign presents fighting working-class program
https://themilitant.com/2020/07/04/swp-2020-campaign-presents-fighting-working-class-program/
BY SETH GALINSKY
Vol. 84/No. 27
July 13, 2020
Omari Musa, right, SWP candidate for D.C. Congress delegate, speaks with
retired worker James Cunningham June 27.
MILITANT/GLOVA SCOTT
Omari Musa, right, SWP candidate for D.C. Congress delegate, speaks with
retired worker James Cunningham June 27.
Outrage at the impact of the crisis of capitalism on the lives of
working people — from police brutality to bosses’ assaults on wages and
working conditions, and workers’ resistance to these attacks — is
increasing interest in the Socialist Workers Party, the only
working-class party in the 2020 elections. There’s also growing interest
in the Militant newspaper and books by party leaders and other
revolutionists.
SWP candidates and campaign supporters are marching with signs and
banners calling for the cops who killed Breonna Taylor and others to be
indicted; backing solidarity with striking workers at the Bath, Maine,
shipyard; and urging a fight for a government-funded public works
program to put millions to work at union-scale pay, building hospitals,
housing and other things working people need.
SWP campaigners discuss their program and activities with workers,
farmers and small proprietors they meet when they campaign on doorsteps
from small towns and big cities to farms and rural areas.
Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy, her
running mate Malcolm Jarrett, and supporters campaigned at the Knollwood
Court Mobile Home Park in Faribault, Minnesota, a town of some 23,000
people an hour south of Minneapolis June 27.
“I haven’t voted for president since Bill Clinton,” Minnie DeLuna told
Kennedy. “Maybe all the presidents are the same. I would love to see a
woman president though.”
“It’s not the sex of the president that matters,” Kennedy replied. “It’s
which class is in power. The SWP says we need to build a labor party
that will organize our class to defend its interests.”
DeLuna, a Mexican American originally from Texas, said, “I’m not a
Democrat or Republican, but all this racism seems to have come once
Donald Trump became president.”
“The cops have brutalized Black and other working people for decades —
no matter who’s in the White House,” Kennedy said. “The protests
involving hundreds of thousands show that there is less racism in the
working class today than ever. That builds on what was gained in the
mass Black rights struggles in the 1950s and ’60s.”
“I’m on Medicaid,” DeLuna said. “Now it is hard to see the doctor. I
applied for food stamps, but they told me they were too swamped to get
to my application. I had to ask my family for help feeding my 5 year old.”
Emulate the Cuban Revolution
Health insurance exists to provide profits for the capitalist owners of
the hospital, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, not to provide
health care for working people. But in Cuba health care is a right,
Kennedy said. Working people, led by their mass organizations, mobilized
to make sure that everyone who needed medical attention has gotten it,
limiting deaths from the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s the only country where that is true,” Kennedy said. “They could do
that because they made a revolution that brought to power a government
that represents the workers and farmers. We need to do the same.”
During their five-day tour of Minnesota, Kennedy and Jarrett joined two
protests against police brutality, including one of several thousand
June 26 demanding prosecution of the cops who killed Breonna Taylor in
Louisville, Kentucky. The candidates joined other protesters and carried
a large banner demanding prosecution of the cops, for a
government-financed public works program for jobs, and for a labor party.
At a Militant Labor Forum the candidates addressed, much of the
discussion focused on what can be done to put an end to police brutality.
Kennedy explained in her talk that “reforms” of the police under
capitalism — from civilian review boards to the “licensing” of cops —
don’t change their purpose to “serve and protect” the interests of the
capitalist class against the struggles of working people.
“You say the police can’t be reformed,” Becca Young said at the meeting.
“But isn’t calling for police who kill to be jailed just a reform that
will perpetuate a system we want to dismantle?”
“Prosecuting the cops and winning some convictions would send a message
that cops can’t just get away with brutalizing people,” Kennedy said.
“That can force the rulers to reel them in and strengthen the confidence
of working people that it’s possible to win victories.”
Minnesota is one of the states where the SWP is organizing to put its
presidential ticket on the ballot. They’ve been certified for the ballot
in Colorado and have fulfilled all the necessary requirements in
Vermont. Supporters are organizing to get on the ballot in Louisiana.
In Minnesota and other states — New Jersey, Washington and Tennessee —
government lockdowns are still in effect and petitioning requirements
are a challenge. The party has petitioned the state governments to put
the SWP on the ballot directly and is fighting for this right.
Black on Black crime?
Omari Musa, SWP candidate for District of Columbia Delegate to Congress,
talked with retired Safeway worker James Cunningham on his porch June
27. Cunningham expressed frustration about the level of crime in
neighborhoods where African Americans live.
Musa described how the fight for Black rights in the 1950s and ’60s
strengthened solidarity as working people began to see what they could
accomplish together in struggle. When youth and working people had
something to fight for, the crime rate went down.
“I had two full-time jobs, which made it possible for me to sustain my
family and buy this house. It is possible for young people today to do
likewise,” said Cunningham.
“Many do have two, maybe three jobs,” Musa replied, “mostly low-paying
and part time, making it impossible for youth today to do what you did.
This is why the Socialist Workers Party proposes a federally funded jobs
program with union-scale wages and benefits,” to lessen the competition
among workers for jobs. Cunningham purchased a copy of the Militant. SWP
campaigners plan to drop by again soon.
Campaigners have collected some 150 signatures on petitions to put Musa
on the ballot. They plan to get 500 — double the requirement — by the
filing deadline of Aug. 5. Five who signed picked up a subscription to
the Militant, eight bought books, and 25 got single copies of the paper.
On June 28 Musa and campaign supporters set up a literature table in
Lincoln Park, near the Emancipation Memorial, a statue of President
Abraham Lincoln and a freed slave. It was installed in 1876 with funds
donated by former slaves. Middle-class radicals and liberal politicians
have called for the monument to be taken down. The campaigners joined
the debate about whether the monument should stay up.
A steady stream of people has been visiting the monument to judge it for
themselves.
“History in D.C. is dying on the vine,” Don Folden told Musa. Folden is
well known for his Black history tours in D.C. He defends keeping the
statue up. “Black history is covered up,” he said “You have to ask why.
We have some very painful, ugly history. It’s easier to forget it than
to explain it.”
“It was Lincoln who organized to defeat the slavocracy during the Civil
War,” Omari told Folden “That was good! It doesn’t matter what he
thought in his head. Some 250,000 Blacks served in the Union Army that
ensured the slavocracy’s defeat. Those are the things that count.”
David Rosenfeld in Minneapolis and Arlene Rubinstein, Glova Scott and
Arrin Hawkins in Washington, D.C., contributed to this article.
See directory to contact nearest party campaign office.
Demand jobs program to put millions back to work!
Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for president,
issued the following statement July 1. Malcolm Jarrett is the party’s
candidate for vice president. Workers today confront rising competition
among our class for jobs amid massive unemployment, a result of the…
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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