https://themilitant.com/2020/02/29/we-need-a-labor-party-independent-of-the-bosses/
SWP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN KENTUCKY
‘We need a labor party, independent of the bosses’
article
BY AMY HUSK
Vol. 84/No. 9
March 9, 2020
MILITANT/KAITLIN ESTILL Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate
Alyson Kennedy speaks to meeting at Louisville apartment complex Feb.
20, hosted
by resident Lamont Anthony, seated behind podium. figure
Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy speaks to
meeting at Louisville apartment complex Feb. 20, hosted by resident
Lamont Anthony,
seated behind podium.
MILITANT/KAITLIN ESTILL Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate
Alyson Kennedy speaks to meeting at Louisville apartment complex Feb.
20, hosted
by resident Lamont Anthony, seated behind podium. figure end
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — “We don’t say, ‘Vote for me and I’ll fix everything,’”
Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for president, told a
meeting
at the Mount Lebanon of Cedars apartments community room here Feb. 20.
Instead, Kennedy, running mate Malcolm Jarrett, and dozens of SWP
candidates across the country use the election campaign to explain that
workers need
to rely on their own strength, independent of the capitalist rulers,
their state and their political parties.
The Socialist Workers Party 2020 platform, she explained, points to the
need for “a movement of millions” that will fight to replace “the rule
of the exploitative
capitalist class with a workers and farmers government.”
MILITANT/REBECCA WILLIAMSON Michele Smith, right, campaigner for SWP
presidential ticket of Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett, talks with
construction
and maintenance worker Maria Parada in Seattle Feb. 22. “It’s good to
know about the world,” Parada said, as she got a Militant subscription.
figure
Michele Smith, right, campaigner for SWP presidential ticket of Alyson
Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett, talks with construction and maintenance
worker Maria
Parada in Seattle Feb. 22. “It’s good to know about the world,” Parada
said, as she got a Militant subscription.
MILITANT/REBECCA WILLIAMSON Michele Smith, right, campaigner for SWP
presidential ticket of Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett, talks with
construction
and maintenance worker Maria Parada in Seattle Feb. 22. “It’s good to
know about the world,” Parada said, as she got a Militant subscription.
figure end
“There have been movements of millions in U.S. history,” Kennedy said.
“The civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s and the powerful
movement that built
the industrial unions and won unemployment benefits and social security
in the 1930s, for example. When working people begin to stand up in
their millions
again, we can build our own party, a labor party that fights for working
people all year round. Supporting fights today like the copper miners on
strike
against Asarco in Arizona strengthens this course.”
During Kennedy’s tour in Kentucky she also spoke at a Militant Labor
Forum, was interviewed by WAVE 3 TV News and a gospel radio station, in
addition to
campaigning door to door here and Bedford, a small town outside of
Louisville. Margaret Trowe, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate, Samir
Hazboun, the party’s
candidate for the 3rd Congressional District, and supporters in the area
accompanied her.
Some 25 people came to the meeting at the Mount Lebanon of Cedars hosted
by Lamont Anthony, who lives in this government-subsidized assisted
living housing
complex. Anthony, 62, met the SWP when Amy Husk, the 2019 candidate for
governor, spoke at a church breakfast. He joined the party in bringing
solidarity
to autoworkers on strike against General Motors last fall and in
campaigning for prisoners’ rights.
About half the participants were residents of the complex. There were
also Walmart, restaurant and other area workers attending.
During the discussion period Dennisha Rivers told Kennedy that she had
worked at a hotel with immigrant workers, some of whom didn’t speak
English. “The
way management treated these workers was so disrespectful,” she said.
“As a Black woman I was offended by it. Some people say immigrants are
stealing our
jobs. But I don’t think we can accept these attitudes towards
immigrants. What do you think about Trump putting immigrant children in
concentration camps?”
“Most workers believe an injury to one is an injury to all,” Kennedy
responded. “It’s important to do what you did and stand up against
injustice on the
job or anywhere we see it.”
The Socialist Workers Party opposes the abusive treatment of workers
caught up in the immigration jails just like it opposes the abuse of
prisoners everywhere.
Amnesty for immigrants
“Immigrants come to the U.S. because they are escaping difficult
conditions created by imperialist and capitalist exploitation in their
home countries,”
Kennedy said.
She noted that keeping workers without papers as a pool of
superexploited labor is a bipartisan policy, carried out by both
Democrats and Republicans alike.
President Bill Clinton collaborated with Republicans in Congress to pass
the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996,
which
is used today to victimize immigrants and divide the working class.
U.S. imperialism depends on immigrant labor to drive down wages to
better compete with its capitalist rivals around the world. It tightens
or relaxes controls
at the border depending on the needs of the employers.
“My party demands amnesty for all immigrants without papers here and we
support struggles of workers in other countries against conditions the
U.S. government
has helped impose there,” Kennedy said. “This is a life-and-death
question for building a fighting union movement that can unite the
working class.”
Radio host: ‘Party for working class’
Bishop Dennis Lyons opened up his “Gospel in My Soul” radio interview
with Kennedy by saying, “I understand that your campaign is for the
working class.
Your platform points out that the bosses and their government always lie
to working people about how much money they make. They always say they
can’t pay
higher wages.” He asked her to explain the party’s demand for workers
control of production.
“I work for Walmart, one of the richest companies in the world. In
Texas, they pay us $11 an hour,” Kennedy said. “We know they can pay
more. As working
people organize to defend themselves, we can force the employers to open
their books so we can see the real situation, including how big their
profits
are. We’ll learn how they cut corners to cheat us and the workers who
shop there.
“Then we can fight to take more and more control over how things are
done. Of course that will require strong unions that we control. In the
process we
will learn we are capable of organizing production and running the
economy,” she said. “We can build a labor party, a party of millions,
that can organize
our fight to take political power.”
“Everyone says we have a government for and by the people, but we know
that’s not what’s really going on,” Lyons said. He then asked what
Kennedy thought
about police brutality, racist discrimination and the “outrageous
criminal injustice system.”
“Look at who is in prison. It’s working people, disproportionately
African American,” Kennedy said. “It’s a class question. The wealthy
rule by keeping
us convinced that we are lowlifes and stupid. They want us to stay in
our place and not get out of line. They use the schools to perpetuate
these myths.”
Kennedy recalled how she had lived in Louisville for a couple years and
taught at Wheatley Elementary School. “That experience was one of the
many things
that convinced me there’s something really wrong in this society, it’s
impossible to really teach,” Kennedy said. “I was part of the fight to
desegregate
the schools here.”
Oppose U.S. rulers’ wars abroad
Samir Hazboun joined Kennedy on the platform at the Militant Labor Forum
Feb. 22. He took up the question of why the U.S. capitalist rulers are
driven
to fight imperialist wars abroad.
“Many workers agree with us that working people have no interest in
supporting Washington’s wars,” Hazboun said. “They are beginning to
understand who
the real ‘we’ and ‘they’ are. When workers go on strike they see that
‘we’ are on one side of the fence and ‘they’ are on the other. We have
to look at
all questions, including Washington’s wars abroad, in class terms.”
“I’m opposed to most of the wars that the U.S. is involved in,” said
Ryan Deason, a Walmart worker, “but wasn’t World War II different
because it was against
fascism?”
“Far from being a savior for workers, Roosevelt used the war drive to
attack workers’ struggles and rights,” Hazboun said. “Members of our
party were railroaded
to prison for our involvement in fights like the Teamsters organizing
drives in the Midwest and our campaign to explain that the coming war
would be conducted
to advance the capitalist rulers’ ability to exploit workers here and
abroad against their imperialist rivals. Roosevelt’s administration
barred Jewish
refugees trying to escape the Nazis from entering the U.S., sending them
back to their deaths.”
Hazboun encouraged participants in the forum to join this year’s May Day
International Brigade of Volunteer Work and Solidarity with Cuba. “The
Cuban Revolution
is an example of what is possible when working people take power,” he said.
Matthew Murphy, a 22-year-old student from Oakland, California, was in
town visiting a friend who is a campaign supporter. After hearing
Kennedy speak,
he joined her campaigning in Bedford.
“I like how the Socialist Workers campaign explains the negative
attitudes toward workers” promoted by the rulers and their meritocratic
boosters, Murphy
said.
Kennedy talked to Sally Patterson, a retired health care and factory
worker, on her doorstep. Patterson told her she voted for Obama and
thought that “Obamacare”
was good because there were “a lot of children who didn’t have any
health insurance.”
“But ‘Obamacare’ is still health insurance, you’ve got to pay,” said
Kennedy. “It’s not health care.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Patterson said. She described the conditions of
elderly people in nursing homes. “They have worked all their lives and
everything they
owned is now gone. They get told when to eat, when to sleep.”
“The capitalist class pushes their own dog-eat-dog morality onto us. To
only look out for yourself,” Kennedy said. “Our class, the working
class, has different
values. We look out for each other.”
“That’s true, too,” Patterson said. She bought a subscription to the
Militant, a copy of
In Defense of the US Working Class
by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters, and a Kennedy-Jarrett campaign button
to wear.
See directory
to contact party campaign office nearest you.
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• Striking Asarco miners protest bosses’ union-busting attacks
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