‘Workers can fight to change our conditions,’ say SWP candidates
https://themilitant.com/2020/09/26/workers-can-fight-to-change-our-conditions-say-swp-candidates/
BY GEORGE CHALMERS
Vol. 84/No. 39
October 5, 2020
Amanda Allen, right, talks with SWP candidates Alyson Kennedy for
president and Malcolm Jarrett for vice president in Forney, Texas, Sept.
17. Allen decided to join them in campaigning.
MILITANT/HILDA CUZCO
Amanda Allen, right, talks with SWP candidates Alyson Kennedy for
president and Malcolm Jarrett for vice president in Forney, Texas, Sept.
17. Allen decided to join them in campaigning.
DALLAS — “I believe what the Socialist Workers Party candidates stand
for, over what we have now,” nurse Amanda Allen told SWP candidates
Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett, running for president and vice
president, in Forney, a small town east of Dallas Sept. 17. She endorsed
the SWP’s 2020 presidential ticket.
Referring to the Democrats and Republicans, she added, “Neither party
says what they will do for working people other than the promises they
never keep.”
SWP candidates say working people need to build their own party, a labor
party based on our union struggles, that would organize workers in their
millions to defend their interests all year round and chart a course to
take power out of the hands of the capitalist class.
Allen first met SWP members at a Juneteenth protest here against police
brutality, where she subscribed to the Militant and bought several books
by party leaders. She spoke with Kennedy and Jarrett when they came to
Forney and then joined them in campaigning among other working people in
the area.
As the Nov. 3 election approaches, SWP campaigners are stepping up
efforts to win endorsers for the party’s ticket, along with signing up
subscribers to the Militant, getting books by party leaders and other
revolutionaries into the hands of those they meet, and raising demands
aimed at winning some protection for working people from the impact of
the crisis and that point a way forward for the working class.
This effort will get a boost from the eight-week fall Militant
subscription, book and SWP party-building fund drive that begins Sept.
26 and runs through Nov. 24.
Kennedy and Jarrett campaigned in Texas and Oklahoma Sept. 16-20. They
spoke with workers on their doorsteps, living rooms and in Walmart
parking lots.
“We were proud to host Alyson and Malcolm and thank them for explaining
their platform,” Camille Landry, the proprietor of Nappy Roots Books,
told customers when the socialist candidates visited the store. Nappy
Roots specializes in African American literature.
With tens of millions thrown out of a job, bosses are trying to speed up
the pace of work, cut wages and force workers to toil in more dangerous
working conditions. The SWP 2020 campaign platform puts front and center
the need for a fight for jobs. It explains that as workers stand
together against the bosses’ attacks we can take steps toward building a
union in every workplace. (See platform.)
In southwest Dallas, Kennedy and Gerardo Sánchez, the party’s candidate
for U.S. Senate in Texas, met Nelson Marroquín, who was preparing to
paint his porch Sept. 19. “I was out of work for two and a half months
after coronavirus began,” Marroquín said. “Now I only get four or five
days a week.”
“I have met many workers like you who are working, but with shorter
hours,” Sánchez said. “Unions need to demand cutting the workweek with
no cut in take-home pay to spread around the available work, our
platform explains.
Christopher Pennock, left, a shop steward in National Association of
Letter Carriers, on picket line at GM plant in Hudson, Wisconsin, during
2019 auto strike. Pennock endorsed Socialist Workers Party ticket,
“because I want to vote for a society that values workers and farmers.”
COURTESY OF CHRISTOPHER PENNOCK
Christopher Pennock, left, a shop steward in National Association of
Letter Carriers, on picket line at GM plant in Hudson, Wisconsin, during
2019 auto strike. Pennock endorsed Socialist Workers Party ticket,
“because I want to vote for a society that values workers and farmers.”
“And working people need to fight for a massive government-funded jobs
program with wages we can live on,” he added.
“Everything is controlled by people in power,” Marroquín said. “The rich
don’t have any idea what is happening to us.”
“The capitalists seem like they are an all-powerful class,” Kennedy told
him. “But it is possible for workers to fight for better conditions. We
are the ones who produce the wealth in society and can fight for a world
that is not based on the profit system.” Marroquín bought a copy of the
Militant.
Next door, contractor Adrian Rangel told Jarrett he hadn’t worked in
months. “And I have gotten no unemployment benefits,” he said.
“Our campaign doesn’t just talk about joblessness and deteriorating
conditions, it talks about what we can do,” Jarrett said. “Working
people must stand up and fight to change our conditions.”
“The strike in Canada of 1,400 Dominion grocery store workers is an
example of fights happening today that need our solidarity,” Jarrett
added. Rangel subscribed to the Militant.
The SWP platform calls for unemployment benefits at union scale for all
those thrown out of work, whether they are considered “self-employed” or
whether or not they have papers the government views as proper.
Kennedy met Falesha Joyner in Oklahoma City Sept. 18 while campaigning
in a largely African American working-class neighborhood. Joyner was
severely injured and her mother, niece and nephew were among the 168
people killed when right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh set off a bomb
at the federal building there in 1995.
“Those effected were supposed to get help from the government, but a lot
of us, including my family, never saw a thing,” Joyner said. “Along with
others I protested.”
Kennedy said, “The only thing that will better the conditions of working
people is standing up and fighting for our rights.”
“Yes,” Joyner said, “that is why I went with my daughter to a march in
this neighborhood for George Floyd. Thousands of people came.” She got a
copy of the Militant.
Win new endorsers!
Campaigners in Minnesota have won several new endorsers for the
Socialist Workers Party ticket.
Christopher Pennock, a member of the National Association of Letter
Carriers, said he endorsed “because I want to vote for a society that
values workers and farmers.”
“As a letter carrier and shop steward I see every day the damage that
capitalism does to my co-workers,” he said. “Workers need a political
party of our own that will fight for our interests.”
August Nimtz, a professor at the University of Minnesota and activist in
the fight against the U.S. rulers’ economic war against revolutionary
Cuba, also endorsed.
See the campaign office nearest you.
David Rosenfeld in Minneapolis contributed to this article.
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Robert G. Ingersoll
“Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm
of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Works Of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. Iii