‘Help us put the Socialist Workers Party on the ballot!’
https://themilitant.com/2021/01/30/help-us-put-the-socialist-workers-party-on-the-ballot-2/
BY ALYSON KENNEDY
Vol. 85/No. 5
February 8, 2021
Gerardo Sánchez, SWP candidate for Dallas City Council, talks with
Valerie Pinales Jan. 20 on her doorstep about the party’s program. She
signed the petition to put the party on the ballot.
MILITANT/GEORGE CHALMERS
Gerardo Sánchez, SWP candidate for Dallas City Council, talks with
Valerie Pinales Jan. 20 on her doorstep about the party’s program. She
signed the petition to put the party on the ballot.
DALLAS — Socialist Workers Party campaigners have gotten off to a solid
start in the fight to win ballot status for Gerardo Sánchez, the party’s
candidate for City Council District 1. They are extending the party’s
reach and finding interest in its program and activity as they knock on
doors in working-class neighborhoods and talk to co-workers.
Sánchez, a tire and lube worker at Walmart who grew up in Cuernavaca,
Mexico, has also worked as a meatpacker and an underground coal miner.
He is part of today’s fights for job safety, improved wages and better
working conditions and has taken part in protests against police
brutality. He built solidarity with Asarco copper miners on strike for
months against boss attacks.
Sánchez’s supporters are collecting signatures to put him on the ballot
for the May 1 election. As of Jan. 25, 62 workers and young people had
signed petitions, including 18 co-workers of campaign supporters. The
goal is to collect 200 signatures.
“Everywhere I go I explain the need to fight for a federal
government-financed public works program to put millions to work,”
Sánchez told the Militant. “We need to fight to cut the workweek with no
cut in pay, and demand cost-of-living clauses in every contract that
raise pay and retirement benefits to offset all increases in prices.”
The Dallas Morning News reported, “Texas is on pace to lose 680,000 jobs
this year, the biggest annual decline on record.” Almost one in five
adults in Dallas are in households that don’t have enough to eat, it said.
“Working people have no voice,” Sánchez told Maria Elena Alfaro while
campaigning in the Lake Cliff neighborhood. “The Democrats and
Republicans represent the rich. Workers need our own party, a labor
party, to organize us to fight in the interest of all working people.”
Alfaro agreed, saying she quit her job at a book warehouse because
bosses were not taking necessary measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“Workers need to be at work. This is what my campaign stands for,”
Sánchez said, handing her a copy of the SWP action program. “We must
organize to fight growing employer attacks on our jobs, wages and
working conditions. We can fight for workers control of production to
ensure that we have health and safety on the job. The bosses care about
profits, not the dangerous conditions we are forced to work under.”
“They told us to social distance, but there were not enough masks or
sanitizers,” Alfaro said. “If there had been protests against these
conditions at work, I would have joined them.”
On the first night of campaigning for Sánchez, George Chalmers knocked
on the door of Andrea Jenkins. “I supported Bernie Sanders and I saw how
the election was rigged to keep him from winning,” she said.
They discussed the events at the Capitol Jan. 6 where conspiracy
theorists, would-be paramilitaries and some supporters of Donald Trump
briefly occupied the building. Since then more than 100 of those accused
of being in the Capitol have been arrested and may have been fired from
their jobs.
Under the guise of going after “domestic terrorists,” the U.S.
government and the FBI are attacking political rights the working class
needs to defend its interests.
“Jenkins signed to get the SWP on the ballot and got a six-month
subscription to the Militant newspaper,” Chalmers said. “At the same
time, another campaign supporter was talking to one of her neighbors
across the street who signed, got a copy of the Red Zone: Cuba and the
Battle Against Ebola in West Africa, and gave a contribution to the
campaign.”
Claudia Acosta, who had been laid off from a recycling plant, signed up
at a Dallas grocery store to help put Sánchez on the ballot after
hearing what he fights and stands for. “There have been many years of
bad conditions for us and violations of our rights,” she pointed out.
Hilda Cuzco contributed to this article.
SWP campaign helps win long-term readers to ‘Militant’
Socialist Workers Party candidates in the 2021 elections are discussing
the party’s action program with working people coast to coast. As they
do so they are visiting many of the 3,000 plus people who have
subscribed to the Militant over…
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Emmett F. Fields “ Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do
not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is
an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively,
fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.
” ― Emmett F. Fields