https://themilitant.com/2020/03/21/we-need-to-stand-up-to-the-bosses/
SWP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SAYS:
‘We need to stand up to the bosses’
article
BY BETSEY STONE
Vol. 84/No. 12
March 30, 2020
MILITANT/BETSEY STONE SWP presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy and
nurse Christina Ware talk near San Leandro housing complex where
residents are fighting
landlord’s moves to nearly double their rent. figure
SWP presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy and nurse Christina Ware talk
near San Leandro housing complex where residents are fighting landlord’s
moves
to nearly double their rent..
MILITANT/BETSEY STONE SWP presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy and
nurse Christina Ware talk near San Leandro housing complex where
residents are fighting
landlord’s moves to nearly double their rent. figure end
SAN LEANDRO, Calif. — Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate
Alyson Kennedy and vice presidential candidate Malcolm Jarrett
campaigned at a housing
complex here March 11. Residents are fighting against efforts to force
them out of their low-rent apartments. The visit was part of five days
of campaigning
in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The SWP candidates also joined a protest against shutting down the Seton
Medical Center in Daly City, just south of San Francisco, and campaigned
in other
working-class neighborhoods (see accompanying article).
Residents of the Hesperian apartments, a complex of 80 duplex units, say
that the new landlord has offered them up to $5,000 if they move out by
April
13. The company plans to “renovate” the apartments and then nearly
double the rent to $2,500 a month. The landlords are pressuring people
to take their
offer now or risk being forced out without compensation. Some 75
residents joined an outdoor meeting in early February to discuss what
they could do.
“We can use all the support we can get,” Donna Borders, who has lived
there for over 30 years, told Kennedy when campaign supporters knocked
on her door.
“Many here are on Social Security. Others have kids. They are not going
to be able to afford more rent.”
“This is happening more broadly,” Kennedy said. “Capitalist landlords
have been raising rents everywhere. With wages what they are, workers
can’t afford
that. The only way we’ll turn this around is by building a united
movement of workers, and breaking any reliance on the promises of the
ruling rich and
their parties.”
The Socialist Workers Party 2020 campaign platform calls for a
government-financed public works program, including “quality affordable
housing” that workers
need, to put millions to work at union-scale wages. Wages like that
would ensure workers could pay the rent. To win demands like these will
take “organizing
and strengthening the unions, and building our own party, a labor
party,” Kennedy said.
Ed Borders, Donna’s husband, joined the discussion. A retired truck
driver, he questioned whether unions will help. “They were good in
earlier times, but
now they’re corrupt,” he said.
“Workers need unions where we can organize and use our power,” Kennedy
said. “We have to transform these unions, so we can fight. The unions
are weak because
the union officials tell workers to rely on Democratic Party politicians
who say they are ‘friends of labor,’ but are part of the capitalist
rulers’ political
system. Our unions need to be rebuilt out of struggles to defend our
wages and working conditions and through solidarity with other workers’
battles.”
“I have leaned toward seeing the Democrats as pro-worker,” Ed Borders
said. “But I guess they’re all politicians. They don’t really care about
us.”
Neighbors from two other apartments joined the discussion. One of them,
a landscaper, bought a subscription to the Militant that they could all
share.
On March 13, Jarrett and Joel Britton, the SWP congressional candidate
in District 13, campaigned in West Oakland. Residents there are
demanding government
action to remove contamination after a carcinogenic chemical was found
in the ground water under McClymonds High School.
That same day, Kennedy and Jarrett exchanged views with some San Leandro
Walmart workers on how we can fight for our rights today. The workers
had signed
a card of solidarity with copper miners on strike against Asarco in
Arizona and Texas.
In Lathrop, a city in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley 60 miles east
of Oakland, the Socialist Workers Party candidates knocked on the door
of Raul
Villalvazo, who had worked on ranches in California for many years.
Villalvazo, 80, told them “the rich people have gotten rich off the
land.” He liked
what they said about the example of Cuba, where workers and farmers made
a revolution and took control of their own future, saying he has backed
the revolution
since he was 18. He subscribed to the Militant.
‘Virus deepens capitalist crisis’
“Workers won’t stop looking for ways to stand up to the bosses’ attacks
on wages and working conditions, including to the government’s criminal
response
to the coronavirus,” Kennedy told a Bay Area-wide campaign meeting March
14 at a community center here. “The deepening economic crisis wasn’t
fundamentally
caused by the coronavirus, but it has dramatically exacerbated it.”
The rapid fall in the stock market, the shutting down of production
across the world, and the efforts by capitalist rulers everywhere to put
the burden
on the backs of working people, exposed the challenges facing us today.
In face of the unfolding disaster, the program of the Socialist Workers
Party is
more important than ever.
“Our campaign points to what working people ourselves can become when we
organize and fight together in our own class interests,” Kennedy said.
Libby Kiser, a fitness center instructor, endorsed the campaign. “I was
with the candidates at the meeting where people were fighting to save
the Seton
hospital,” she said. “One of the people who testified appealed to the
politicians and owners closing it, saying they should have a heart. I
wanted to yell
out, ‘No, they don’t have a heart.’ This campaign shows it’s the workers
who will change things, that we do have that power.”
At the meeting, more than $2,300 was collected to help fund the
campaign. Organizers urged supporters to join in upcoming campaigning
and efforts to put
the SWP candidates on the ballot in a number of states.
See directory
to contact party campaign office nearest you.
article end
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Nurses, workers lead fight against hospital shutdown
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IN THIS ISSUE
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• Demand gov’t act now to protect working people!
• Virus triggers breakdowns, bosses’ attacks on workers
• 75 years after Auschwitz: ‘Not long ago. Not far away’
• Crisis in West Africa rooted in decades of colonial rule
• ‘We need to stand up to the bosses’
• Back strikers’ five monthlong battle against Asarco union busting
• Protests continue in Iraq against interventions by Iran, Washington
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Feature Articles
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• ‘A party whose deeds — as well as words — lead along the road whose
goal is workers power’
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• New Zealand: Edwards’ death ‘should never have happened’
• London rally backs women’s rights in Sudan
• Nurses, workers lead fight against hospital shutdown
• ‘We need workers control over production, utilities’
• Jobs, lives hit as profit-driven bosses shut operations
• A book about the road to workers power
• Cuba’s revolution: Example of solidarity, fight against virus
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Books of the Month
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• Founders of US Communist Party aimed to lead workers to power
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