https://themilitant.com/2019/04/13/swp-candidate-for-state-assembly-speaks-at-community-meeting-in-nj/
SWP candidate for State Assembly speaks at community meeting in NJ
By Jenny King
Vol. 83/No. 16
April 22, 2019
Inset, Lea Sherman, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New Jersey
State Assembly, and Seth Galinsky, SWP candidate for New York City
public advocate, speak at April 1 meeting of Regional Alliance of
Students and Professionals at La Luz del Mundo church in Jersey City,
New Jersey. Above, Sherman shows meeting participants Militant and
Pathfinder books on working-class struggle.
Militant photos by Vivian Sahner
Inset, Lea Sherman, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New Jersey
State Assembly, and Seth Galinsky, SWP candidate for New York City
public advocate, speak at April 1 meeting of Regional Alliance of
Students and Professionals at La Luz del Mundo church in Jersey City,
New Jersey. Above, Sherman shows meeting participants Militant and
Pathfinder books on working-class struggle.
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Fifty people attended the April 1 meeting of the
Regional Alliance of Students and Professionals to hear Lea Sherman,
Socialist Workers Party candidate for New Jersey State Assembly, speak
about her campaign. The meeting here, part of a monthly series on social
issues, was built through their church, La Luz del Mundo.
The event was chaired by Esther Rodriguez, organizer of the group. The
audience was in large part workers and students from Jersey City and the
surrounding townships of Union City, Weehawken, and West New York, some
of whom had their children with them.
“Licencias sí! Promesas no! Amnistía! Si se puede!” (Licenses, yes!
Promises, no! Amnesty! Yes, we can!) Sherman said to applause to open
her presentation. She explained that a week ago she had marched in
Bridgeton to demand driver’s licenses for all. Bridgeton is in a rural
farming area in southern New Jersey.
Seth Galinsky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New York City
Public Advocate, joined Sherman up front, translating her remarks into
Spanish and participating in the discussion.
People asked a range of questions. Does the Socialist Workers Party have
any members in New Jersey or New York sitting in positions of power?
What do they do to help workers?
One woman read from the New Jersey SWP campaign statement about how
declining real wages make it difficult for workers to start a family,
asking what would you do to change this?
“You mentioned that you support driver’s licenses for everyone. What
else are you going to do for undocumented immigrants?” Esther Rodriguez
asked. And “what is socialism? So much is said about it.”
“Democrats and Republicans say vote for me and I’ll fight for you,”
Sherman said. “But lesser-evil politics doesn’t work for the working
class. They are parties of the bosses. We must fight together to make a
change and build a new society based on solidarity, not on exploitation.
Capitalism is a calamity for working people around the world, including
its ongoing wars. It’s a moral question.”
She said the bosses at Walmart, where she works, were forced to raise
wages to $15 an hour, but that isn’t enough to support a family today.
Change takes a movement of millions
Sherman explained that she grew up in the 1970s in Dallas before the
civil rights movement exploded there and overthrew Jim Crow segregation.
It wasn’t elected officials, Sherman said, but a movement of millions in
the streets that ended Jim Crow.
“I call for amnesty for all immigrants living here without papers,” she
said. “We need to strengthen the labor movement, to make our unions a
vehicle to fight for the working class.”
“This isn’t an immigrant question,” Seth Galinsky added, “but a
working-class issue. It’s the working class that creates the wealth. We
pick the crops, build roads and housing, work in the factories. But the
bosses and their government make the decisions.”
He pointed to the bosses at Boeing and how recent deadly crashes by two
of their jets show why workers have to take control over production and
safety.
Sherman encouraged everyone to participate in the statewide May Day
march in Perth Amboy to demand driver’s licenses for all.
The lively discussion continued after the program, including around a
table with books, leaflets and other literature the SWP campaigners
brought with them. Six books were sold, including Are They Rich Because
They’re Smart? by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, The Communist
Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and In Defense of the US
Working Class by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters, as well as a subscription
to the Militant.
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