Socialist Workers Party candidates get hearing in Bath, Boston, Albany
https://themilitant.com/2020/07/11/socialist-workers-party-candidates-get-hearing-in-bath-boston-albany/
Vol. 84/No. 28 ● July 20, 2020
A SOCIALIST NEWSWEEKLY PUBLISHED IN THE INTERESTS OF WORKING PEOPLE
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Socialist Workers Party candidates get hearing in Bath, Boston, Albany
BY VED DOOKHUN
Vol. 84/No. 28
July 20, 2020
Top, SWP presidential candidates Alyson Kennedy, right, and Malcolm
Jarrett, back center, join Bath, Maine, shipyard strikers on picket line
July 2. Inset, congressional candidate Willie Cotton, right, marches in
New York City July 4 protest.
ABOVE, MILITANT/LAURA ANDERSON; INSET, MILITANT/MIKE SHUR
Top, SWP presidential candidates Alyson Kennedy, right, and Malcolm
Jarrett, back center, join Bath, Maine, shipyard strikers on picket line
July 2. Inset, congressional candidate Willie Cotton, right, marches in
New York City July 4 protest.
BATH, Maine — Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett, Socialist Workers
Party candidates for president and vice president, joined striking
shipbuilding workers on the picket lines at Bath Iron Works to bring
solidarity to their strike, July 1-3.
“Workers everywhere need to support your fight,” Kennedy told striking
members of Machinists Local S6. “By standing up to the bosses’ demand to
undermine seniority and to use contract workers, you are setting an
example for other workers across the country.”
“You can be sure that we will get out the word about your fight
everywhere we go,” Jarrett added.
On July 2 Jarrett and Kennedy spoke at a house meeting in Boston, a
couple hours south, where they reported on their visit to the picket
lines and discussed the party’s platform and campaign plans. After
attending the meeting, Sarah Bustin, a 19-year-old University of
Massachusetts student in Lowell, joined the candidates the next day to
go to the strikers’ pig roast.
“It was eye opening to hear about the strike, learn about issues the
workers face and see them taking action to make real change,” Bustin
said after the trip. She has begun telling other young people about the
strike. In helping organize an anti-police brutality demonstration in
the Boston area, Bustin is working with fellow protesters to raise money
for the union’s strike fund.
Evelyn Sweet, 26, a worker in Albany, New York, who met SWP campaigners
during protests there against police brutality, also joined in going to
the strike. Sweet was impressed with the support strikers were receiving.
“Everyone who drove by honked their horns,” she said. “The fact that 87%
of the workers voted against the contract shows how unified the workers
are and the strength and power of the union.”
At the pig roast, welder Aaron Towle, who has worked at the shipyard for
five years, told Kennedy, “This is my first strike.”
“I can refuse to do jobs if they are unsafe,” he said. “I had to call
the union safety guy because the boss wanted me to weld while standing
on a plywood board several stories high above the ground without proper
protection. The bosses are always in a hurry.”
“You’re right, they don’t care about our safety,” Kennedy said. “My
campaign supports building a labor party and fighting for workers
control of production. A labor party would mobilize working people all
over the country to support your strike.”
Strikers appreciate that Bath protesters against police brutality have
joined the picket line in solidarity. “We are down with Black Lives
Matter here,” Justin Johansen, a shipbuilder electrician for six years,
told Jarrett.
“That’s great,” Jarrett said. “We need the unions to join the fight to
demand that cops who commit brutality are prosecuted.”
Five strikers bought subscriptions to the Militant and 27 picked up
single copies.
‘A party trying to do things’
“I was unaware of the many struggles that are going on today,” Amanda
Plott, a 22-year-old worker at a Target warehouse, said after hearing
Kennedy and Jarrett speak at a campaign forum in Albany. Plott described
learning about the strikes of copper workers at Asarco and fruit packers
in Washington state. “This is encouraging,” she said. Plott had met SWP
campaigners at a recent protest against cop brutality.
See directory to contact nearest party campaign office.
“This is a party trying to do things on the ground, not just trying to
get votes. I have never heard that from a party before,” she said.
“We need more of this,” Gregory Rose told Kennedy, when she described
the shipyard strike to him as she campaigned at a Bath Walmart. “How
working people are treated in the U.S., especially since COVID-19, is
not right,” he added.
“Health care in the U.S. is for profit,” Kennedy said. “That is why Cuba
is an example for workers. Cuban workers and farmers made a revolution
and established health care as a right. They mobilized students and
working people to go into the neighborhoods to find out who might have
COVID to make sure they receive needed care.”
“As a communist country Cuba takes a different approach,” Rose said. He
got a subscription to the Militant and a copy of Malcolm X, Black
Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power.
Socialist Workers Party campaigners across the country encourage those
they meet to join them in supporting labor battles, marching against
police brutality, and campaigning among fellow workers on their
doorsteps in cities, towns and rural areas.
Fight for jobs program
How to combat the impact of rising unemployment is a frequent question
that comes up in these discussions. Maggie Trowe, SWP candidate for U.S.
Senate from Kentucky, told Wayne Clarkson in Louisville’s Newburg
neighborhood July 3, that the party urges a fight for a
government-funded jobs program to put millions to work at union-scale
wages. “That sounds good. But how do we get that?” Clarkson, a laid-off
dental appliance worker, asked.
“We have to fight for it,” replied Trowe. “The way we have won things in
the past — that’s how we can build a united movement today.”
Trowe showed him Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers
Power. The book describes the leadership role of Black workers in social
and political struggles in the U.S. and explains why the fight for a
workers and farmers government opens the road to the fight to end all
exploitation and oppression. Clarkson subscribed to the Militant and
bought the book.
Janine Johnson subscribed at a July 5 picket line of striking nurses in
Joliet, Illinois, saying she wanted to read about “other unions,
standing up for their rights around the country and the world. We need
to share our experiences.”
To get involved in the SWP campaign, contact the party campaign offices
nearest you.
Jacquie Henderson in Louisville, Kentucky, Laura Anderson in Albany, New
York, and Dan Fein in Chicago contributed to this article.
Support strikes, protests against police brutality! Fight for jobs!
Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for president, issued
the following statement July 8. Malcolm Jarrett is the party’s candidate
for vice president. Striking shipyard workers in Bath, Maine; nurses
walking the picket line for jobs and sick pay in…
Socialist Workers Party 2020 campaign platform
This is the SWP’s fighting campaign platform to confront the economic,
social and moral crisis caused by capitalism: UNIONS/FOR A LABOR PARTY
Support workers’ struggles to organize to defend themselves, to use
union power on behalf of ourselves and all…
Front Page Articles
Bath shipyard workers’ strike gains solidarity
Workers fight back against boss attacks on jobs, safety
Support strikes, protests against police brutality! Fight for jobs!
US rulers step up assault on Venezuela’s sovereignty
Protests demand prosecute cops who shot Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain
Socialist Workers Party candidates get hearing in Bath, Boston, Albany
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Asarco miners end strike, look to continue to fight
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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