https://themilitant.com/2019/01/05/join-socialist-workers-party-2019-campaign/
Join Socialist Workers Party 2019 campaign!
SWP candidates are ‘tribunes of the people’
By Brian Williams
Vol. 83/No. 2
January 14, 2019
Alyson Kennedy, SWP candidate for Dallas mayor, speaks with Dakotah
Luster Dec. 30. “Democrats and Republicans are parties of the bosses,”
she said. “We need our own party.”
Militant/George Chalmers
Alyson Kennedy, SWP candidate for Dallas mayor, speaks with Dakotah
Luster Dec. 30. “Democrats and Republicans are parties of the bosses,”
she said. “We need our own party.”
The Socialist Workers Party has announced plans to run candidates for
more than a dozen municipal and state offices across the country in
2019, including in Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Jersey,
New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington. They will be the only
working-class voices in the elections and speak out as tribunes of the
people.
“My campaign will not just be about workers who live in Dallas but about
working people worldwide,” Alyson Kennedy, the SWP candidate for mayor
there, said by phone Jan. 1. “Whatever the capitalist rulers do to us
here, they do the same thing to working people internationally. That’s
why I speak out against U.S. wars abroad from Afghanistan to Syria and
Iraq. Bring the troops home now!”
Kennedy, a worker at Walmart, was the party’s presidential candidate in
2016. She was among the first wave of women to become coal miners in the
1970s, strengthening the United Mine Workers union. Most recently she
joined protests by striking teachers in Oklahoma last spring.
Supporters of the Socialist Workers Party in Dallas are mapping out a
bold plan to kick off campaigning across the state Jan. 12-26, including
collecting more than 600 signatures in Dallas to get Kennedy on the ballot.
Tribunes of the people
“We speak in the interests of all those who are exploited, oppressed and
discriminated against under capitalism. That’s why we say we are
tribunes of the people and it’s why we are going to campaign far and
wide in Texas and the region,” Kennedy said. “We want to speak with all
working people in towns big and small and farming areas.
“Look at small farmers and ranchers for example. They often end up
putting more money into growing crops, raising cattle than they can get
back. They go under or are forced to take out high interest loans.
They’re debt slaves.”
“We need solidarity,” she said. “We need to fight together or we can
never stand up effectively to the capitalist rulers.”
Socialist Workers Party candidates and their supporters across the
country will talk to working people on their doorsteps, walk strike
picket lines, back drives to organize unions, and join protests against
police brutality and other actions against attacks by the bosses and
their government.
They will use their campaigns to address the conditions workers and
farmers face, such as the lack of affordable, decent housing and health
care, the opioid epidemic and falling life expectancy. They will
introduce workers, farmers, young people and others to books by SWP
leaders and to the Militant, crucial tools for understanding where the
crisis of capitalism comes from and what can be done to organize a
movement that can take power out of the hands of the capitalist class.
“In Texas, at least 14 hospitals have closed in rural areas since 2010,
forcing people to drive hours to see a doctor,” Kennedy said. “And
military veterans come back to the U.S. and face scandalous neglect.
They can’t get adequate medical care.”
Amnesty for immigrants
“Amnesty for undocumented immigrants is a big question in Texas and
nationally,” she said. “The bosses use workers without papers to try to
push down wages. They scapegoat immigrants to try to weaken the fighting
capacity of the working class. Fighting for amnesty is key to rebuilding
a fighting union movement.”
“Workers behind bars face cruel and unusual punishment,” Kennedy added.
“Some Texas prisoners filed a lawsuit against some of these conditions.
More than 70 percent have no air conditioning, and temperatures in the
summer reach well over 100 degrees.”
“These conditions are the result of the capitalist for-profit system,”
Kennedy said. “To see an alterative we will encourage people to join the
upcoming International May Day Brigade to Cuba so they can see for
themselves how making a revolution changed an entire society.”
Amy Husk, SWP candidate for Kentucky governor, helps build solidarity
with workers under attack. Above, she joined workers on strike on Allied
Ready Mix picket in Louisville Oct. 19
Militant/Jacquie Henderson
Amy Husk, SWP candidate for Kentucky governor, helps build solidarity
with workers under attack. Above, she joined workers on strike on Allied
Ready Mix picket in Louisville Oct. 19
The Socialist Workers Party in Louisville is planning to run Amy Husk
for governor of Kentucky. Husk, a medical assistant, is a longtime trade
unionist.
“For several years opponents of women’s right to choose abortion have
been trying to shut down the EMW Women’s Surgical Center here, the last
abortion clinic left in the state,” Husk said Jan. 1. Rightists
frequently protest outside the clinic and last year pushed a bill
through the state legislature that banned a common abortion procedure.
That law is on hold as it’s being challenged in court.
“There is a well-organized clinic defense every Saturday morning by
women’s rights supporters,” Husk said. “The SWP encourages people to
participate and to join protests against the anti-abortion law. To unite
the working class, to participate as equals, women have to be able to
control our own bodies.”
Henry Clay Dennison will be the SWP candidate for City Council in
Seattle. A rail worker and member of the SMART union, Dennison has been
active supporting farmworkers in the Skagit Valley who fought and won
union recognition and a contract with one of the largest berry growers
in the state.
Fight to unite cab and app drivers
The Socialist Workers Party in New York plans to run Seth Galinsky, a
writer for the Militant, for the city’s Public Advocate. The deplorable
conditions faced by over 100,000 drivers from app-based companies like
Uber and Lyft to traditional yellow cabs, as well as other car services,
is a big issue in the city. Eight drivers weighed down by heavy debts
have committed suicide in the past year.
“The capitalists who own the cab and app-based operations try to pit
workers against each other,” Galinsky said. “The bosses have succeeded
in saddling drivers with debts and lengthening the workday of tens of
thousands as they try to make ends meet.
“What’s needed is a unionization drive to organize all drivers together
to fight for higher wages and better working conditions for all,” he said.
Anthony Dutrow will be the SWP candidate for City Commissioner in Miami.
The party campaigned for working people to vote for Amendment 4, which
restored voting rights to ex-prisoners. It passed overwhelmingly in
November. “That victory is having an impact nationally, including
helping spur the recent passage of the federal ‘First Step Act,’” Dutrow
said. The law, signed by President Donald Trump, reduces the “three
strikes” penalty for drug felonies and retroactively limits the
disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine offenses, which
can cut the sentences of 2,000 prisoners.
Contact the nearest SWP branch to find out more and to get involved.
Related Articles
US troops out of Middle East, Afghanistan now!
The following statement was issued Jan. 2 by Alyson Kennedy, Socialist
Workers Party candidate for Dallas mayor. The Socialist Workers Party
demands the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. troops,
bombers and warships from the Middle East and Afghanistan! The…
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Join Socialist Workers Party 2019 campaign!
•US troops out of Middle East, Afghanistan now!
•Judge affirms Chicago cops used torture in frame-up case
•SWP members gear up to take Militant, books door to door
•Los Angeles teachers, supporters rally before Jan. 10 strike deadline
•Trump plan to draw down troops in Syria, Afghanistan stirs debate
•Reader points in right direction
Feature Articles •Nan Bailey: ‘True to her revolutionary convictions
every day of her life’
Also In This Issue •‘Yellow vest’ actions continue to press needs of
French toilers
•‘Militant’ fight against prison censors draws attention
•The Kurds’ decadeslong fight to gain a homeland
•Messages: ‘Nan listened. She was interested’
•‘Selfless, disciplined, loving to a fault’
© Copyright 2019 The Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New
York, NY 10018 - themilitant@xxxxxx
--
________________________________________________
Jules Verne
“ Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add
nothing to them. ”
― Jules Verne