http://themilitant.com/2015/7931/793104.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 31 September 7, 2015
(front page)
SWP campaign finds interest,
support at Sanders rally in S.C.
Militant/Glova Scott
Socialist Workers Party candidate Osborne Hart, center, talks with
Machinist union member James Morrison outside meeting for Bernie Sanders
Aug. 22.
BY ARLENE RUBINSTEIN
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party candidate
for mayor of Philadelphia, and supporters of the party from around the
Southeast traveled here Aug. 22 to talk with those attracted to a
campaign meeting for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is running for
president in the Democratic Party primary.
Hart and the SWP got a serious hearing among those attending the rally
of 3,000. Many stopped to talk at book tables hung with big signs
saying, “Read About Socialism” and “Socialist Workers Party.” Eight
people subscribed to the Militant, 130 got single copies and five books
from Pathfinder Press were purchased.
Sanders and iconoclastic Republican candidate Donald Trump are drawing
big crowds because people see them as different from the other bourgeois
candidates, disdainful of politics as usual, at a time of acute crisis.
The first person Hart shook hands with was Paul Garbarini, a county
worker distributing fliers for the Sept. 5 “Days of Grace” march and
rally called by the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1422
in honor of Walter Scott, Clementa Pinckney and other victims of racist
and police violence (see calendar on page 4).
“I’ll put some of those fliers on my campaign table so we can work with
you to build it,” Hart told Garbarini. “The SWP campaign is a voice for
working people. My running mate, John Staggs, and I are workers at
Walmart fighting for $15 an hour, a union and full-time work. Workers
need a labor party based on the unions.”
“If only labor knew,” replied Garbarini. “They keep voting for the
Republicans.”
“We have to make a class break from the capitalist parties, whether
Democrats or Republicans,” said Hart. “I’m talking about taking
political power, building a revolutionary movement, independent of the
ballot box.
“The mass, dignified response here in Charleston to the racist massacre
of Pinckney and other churchgoers in June is an example of what we see
when working people lead,” he added. “The removal of the Confederate
battle flag from the state Capitol came after battles led by
African-Americans that transformed the consciousness of millions across
the board and strengthened the working class.”
Tony Reyes, a construction worker who is Cuban-American, got an
introductory subscription to the Militant and Cuba and Angola: Fighting
for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own. “We need change,” he said. “I’d get a
few more books, but I got a $300 speeding ticket because of some racial
profiling the other night,” Reyes said. “The cops were egging me on,
giving me the Sandra Bland treatment.” Bland, 28, was pulled over and
arrested by a Texas cop for a minor traffic violation. She died in
police custody July 13.
“I know what you are talking about,” said Hart. “I’m active in the Black
Lives Matter movement. Our protests across the country against police
killings have pushed the cops back.”
Some people wanted to know how Hart differed from Sanders, who sometimes
describes himself as a “democratic socialist.”
“Capitalism is the problem workers face. Sanders’ platform is for
reforming capitalism,” Hart told a student reporter. “The SWP points to
the example of the Cuban Revolution, where working people overturned
capitalism.”
The press took note of the response to the Socialist Workers Party. A
reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution did an article about the
SWP effort, with a prominent photo of the literature table.
Related articles:
Socialist Workers Party leads drive for new readers
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