https://themilitant.com/2019/01/12/swp-wins-a-hearing-in-kentucky-coal-country/
SWP wins a hearing in Kentucky coal country
By Jacquie Henderson
Vol. 83/No. 3
January 21, 2019
Amy Husk, left, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Kentucky governor,
talks with Martha Blair on her doorstep in Whitesburg, Kentucky, Jan. 4,
about party’s campaign and upcoming May Day Brigade to Cuba. Blair said
she was interested in working on both.
Militant/Jacquie Henderson
Amy Husk, left, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Kentucky governor,
talks with Martha Blair on her doorstep in Whitesburg, Kentucky, Jan. 4,
about party’s campaign and upcoming May Day Brigade to Cuba. Blair said
she was interested in working on both.
WHITESBURG, Ky. — Socialist Workers Party candidates and members are
talking with working people in big cities, small towns and farming areas
across the country. Everywhere they go they knock on doors and introduce
the party, its program, the Militant and books by party leaders.
Amy Husk, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Kentucky governor, and
campaign supporters knocked on doors here, a town of 2,000 in Letcher
County, Jan. 4. Working people in this part of Kentucky have been hard
hit by the closing of hundreds of coal mines over the last two decades.
Once a union bastion, the last United Mine Workers-organized mine in the
state closed in 2015.
“I’m from the Socialist Workers Party and we’re running a working-class
campaign,” Husk told those she met. “Both the Democrats and Republicans
defend the interests of the rich. The bosses and the crisis of their
capitalist system have wreaked carnage in working-class communities.
Working people need to rebuild the labor movement and organize to fight
against these attacks.”
SWP campaigners learn firsthand about the conditions fellow workers,
farmers, small proprietors and others face, from low pay, rising debts,
inadequate housing and transportation, to the scourge of the opioid
epidemic wracking working-class neighborhoods.
“I sure am glad to see you’re running,” said Martha Blair, 28, after
Husk and fellow SWP member Samir Hazboun knocked on her door. “Nobody
else is going around here talking about how things really are and asking
people what we think!
“Let me tell you, there are no opportunities in this area. The only jobs
are mostly minimum-wage service jobs,” she said. “I’m studying to be a
cosmetologist and have signed up to get some work doing transcriptions
at home. My husband is a radiology technician and he doesn’t make enough
money to live on.”
“You’re not alone,” said Husk, a medical assistant in Louisville.
“Millions of workers are unable to make ends meet. Health care workers
do our best to give good treatment under difficult conditions, but the
bosses don’t care about us and they don’t care about the patients that
we take care of either.”
“The bosses and their government try to get us to think that immigrant
workers or workers who have been in prison deserve to be treated as
second class,” she said. “But this keeps us divided and hurts our
ability to fight for all our rights.
“That’s why my party defends the right of workers who’ve been behind
bars to vote,” Husk said. “Working people won this in Florida last fall.
Kentucky is one of two states that denies this right for a lifetime to
anyone who has been convicted of a felony. Our campaign calls for a
fight to overturn this law.”
“I agree with that, I’ve read about this fight and signed petitions
online in support of it,” Blair said.
Hazboun explained how workers and farmers in Cuba made a revolution in
1959 and began to uproot the system of oppression and exploitation they
lived under. Workers in Cuba have reached out in solidarity with working
people around the world ever since, despite unrelenting efforts by the
U.S. rulers to overturn the revolution.
May Day Brigade to Cuba
Husk invited Blair to consider going on the May Day International
Volunteer Work Brigade to Cuba this spring to see the revolution
herself. “I’d really like to do something like that,” Blair said. She
asked the SWP campaigners to return so she could purchase a Militant
subscription when she gets some money and talk further about politics
and the brigade.
The main activity of the party is knocking on workers’ doors and seeking
ongoing political relationships and collaboration. Key to this is
following the party and politics through the Militant, and especially in
books by party leaders and other revolutionaries. These describe how
capitalism works and what workers and farmers can do to transform
themselves in struggle, like the Cuban people did, to take political power.
The party is featuring special offers on five books.
“What can I do to help the campaign?” Lydia Hall asked Amy Husk and
Samir Hazboun.
Militant/Jacquie Henderson
“What can I do to help the campaign?” Lydia Hall asked Amy Husk and
Samir Hazboun.
“The recent rise of black lung disease among miners is one of the most
vicious examples of how the bosses attack us,” Husk said when she and
Hazboun knocked on the door of Lydia Hall, a disabled worker. “They have
no regard for our lives except to make money from our labor. They take
no responsibility for care for those whose lives they destroy.”
“You’ve got that right!” Hall responded. Her father had been a union
coal miner who fought for black lung benefits and safer working
conditions. “My three sons were coal miners and one is still working.”
There’s been a bit of an increase in mining in the area again, she said,
but conditions in the mines are worse.
How can I help?
“What can I do to help the campaign?” Hall asked. When Husk asked if she
thought any of her neighbors would be interested in joining her for a
meeting with the SWP candidate when party members come back to town,
Hall said, “Just let me know. I’ll support you in any way I can. I know
a lot of people here and I’ll introduce you to them.” She got a copy of
the Militant.
Across the street SWP members met Jeannie Gibson. Her brother died from
black lung disease. “He was only 56,” Gibson said. “I have two other
brothers who are miners. One has been fighting for benefits because of
the disease. They’ve turned him down twice. He’s real sick and he’s
still fighting.”
“We have to fight for everything,” said Husk. “Their system can’t be
fixed. We have to gain confidence through our unity in struggle to take
the power out of the hands of the rulers. We can organize on the basis
of human solidarity.”
The SWP campaigners sold five copies of the Militant, a subscription and
a copy of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by
SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes. They met with three people
interested in more discussion about participating in the May Day brigade
to Cuba and three others who exchanged contact information to continue
discussions.
Running for more than a dozen municipal and state offices, SWP
candidates are the only voice in the elections in defense of the
interests of working people and all the oppressed.
If you’re interested in more information about the party, the brigade,
or in getting involved in going door-knocking with the SWP, contact the
nearest party branch listed in the directory.
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Socialist Workers Party launches Texas campaign
•Fight to extend right to vote for ex-prisoners!
•US, Chinese rulers’ trade talks continue amid rivalry
•SWP wins a hearing in Kentucky coal country
•Ex-prisoners turn out to register to vote in Florida rights victory
•LA teachers call for workers, parents, students to join strike rally on
Jan. 14
Feature Articles •New book ‘In Defense of the US Working Class’
Also In This Issue •Over half a million people in US have nowhere to live
•Half of adults have had family members thrown in jail
•‘Yellow vest’ protests respond as French gov’t cracks down
•Albany DA drops charges against Ellazar Williams
•NY event celebrates 60th anniversary of Cuban Revolution
•Beijing forces a million Uighurs into ‘re-education’ camps
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Letters
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