https://themilitant.com/2019/08/17/swp-presents-working-class-candidates-road-forward/
SWP presents working-class candidates, road forward
??By Tony Lane
Vol. 83/No. 31
August 26, 2019
John Studer, Socialist Workers Party national campaign director, speaks
at Pittsburgh campaign forum Aug. 10 with Malcolm Jarrett, the party???s
candidate for Pittsburgh City Council.
Militant/Phil Norris
John Studer, Socialist Workers Party national campaign director, speaks
at Pittsburgh campaign forum Aug. 10 with Malcolm Jarrett, the party???s
candidate for Pittsburgh City Council.
PITTSBURGH ??? ???The 2020 presidential elections are well underway. Donald
Trump is running for reelection and a couple dozen Democrats of various
stripes are hammering each other to be the one to stand against him.
Each one seeks to represent the interests of the ruling capitalist
class,??? said John Studer, Socialist Workers Party national campaign
director, at a meeting here Aug. 10.
???The SWP will run its own presidential campaign against the twin parties
of capitalist exploitation and oppression,??? Studer said, ???to join in the
discussions and struggle of working people and point an independent
working-class road forward.???
Also speaking at the meeting were Malcolm Jarrett, the party???s candidate
for Pittsburgh City Council, and Melanie Meade, a resident of nearby
Clairton who has helped lead the fight against pollution spewed out at
U.S. Steel???s Coke Works plant that has sickened workers and area
residents there. Jarrett was met with applause when he told supporters
he had been certified for the ballot. ???We gathered our signatures by
visiting and talking with workers about the need for a working-class
alternative and this effort led us to fighters like Melanie.???
Meade described the fight she is involved in against U.S. Steel. ???They
racked up 6,700 violations and got hit with $2 million in fines for
their pollution,??? she said. ???They had two fires within six months and
deny they caused any harm to working people.???
Meade and Jarrett both spoke out at a recent hearing about a settlement
between the Allegheny Health Department and U.S. Steel. ???The Health
Department is in cahoots with industry,??? she said. ???They don???t believe
we have a voice. That???s why I was glad to be with the Socialist Workers
Party there.???
???A fighting union movement is needed where workers can win control over
safety and production,??? Jarrett said.
He pointed to the example of the Miners for Democracy movement in the
United Mine Workers in the late 1960s and ???70s. ???Workers led a
revolution in their union and won the right to shut down the mine when
they determined there were unsafe conditions and fought to end the
devastation of black lung disease.??? For the capitalist owners, ???their
biggest fear is what workers will do.???
Crisis facing working class continues
???Today the stock market is high and the government claims workers have
close to full employment,??? Studer said. ???But tens of millions of workers
continue to face crisis conditions. For the first time in decades, life
expectancy in the U.S. is falling. Young workers have to wait longer
before moving out of their parents??? home and starting a family.
???And there are storm clouds ahead for capitalism that forebode deeper
attacks on working people,??? he added. ???Manufacturing and production is
falling in Germany, the U.K. and across Europe.
???More and more workers have to go into debt to try and get by,??? he noted.
???Record numbers of workers over 65 are facing bankruptcy,??? Studer said.
???The Financial Times?? says the ???culprits are vanishing pensions, soaring
health care costs and tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid student
loans for themselves, their children and even their grandchildren.??????
???Because the unions are weak, and the officials are beholden to the
Democratic Party as opposed to relying on the fighting capacity of the
working class,??? Studer said, the bosses have blood in their mouth and
are demanding deeper concessions.
???The Socialist Workers Party joins workers on strike picket lines,
social protests and in discussions on their doorsteps about how to
organize a fighting working-class movement, build unions and rely on
ourselves to fight against the capitalist bosses and their government,???
Studer said. ???This is the road forward.???
The Democrats, liberal media and middle-class left say the problem is
President Donald Trump, Studer explained, and more particularly what
they call ???his base??? ??? the working class. ???They say the workers,
especially those who are Caucasian, are all racists and bigots, and
Trump just riles them up. They say workers have to be controlled.???
Conquests of fight for Black rights
The liberals say Trump and his working-class ???base??? are responsible for
the heinous killings in El Paso and Dayton.
???And they prefer to use the term ???people of color,?????? Studer said, which
dissolves the living history of centuries of struggle by
African-Americans against slavery, the Civil War and Radical
Reconstruction, the bloody imposition of Jim Crow and the powerful
Black-led working-class movement that dealt a death blow to segregation
in the 1960s and ???70s. Participation in these struggles advanced the
confidence and fighting capacities of those who joined them as they
transformed themselves and social relations, demonstrating that Black
workers will be in the forefront of revolutionary class battles to come.
There is less racism in the working class today than ever before and
less anti-immigrant prejudice, Studer said.
It???s also revealing, he said, what the liberals say about those who
carried out the massacres. In the case of the El Paso shooter, they
paint him as an ultrarightist. But in his manifesto, in addition to
targeting immigrants, he also railed against climate change and said he
was angry at the corporate world, angry at their treatment of working
people.
The Dayton shooter was an ???antifa,??? a leftist, a support of Bernie
Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who joined armed protests against the Ku
Klux Klan.
Both killers clearly had psychological problems, Studer noted. But the
rulers have slashed mental health care. It???s been replaced by prison and
homelessness, another sign of the disdain the rulers have for working
people, he said. The cut-throat values and violence bred by the workings
of capitalism will not be curbed without fundamental change.
???The SWP fights for mental health care as part of universal,
government-guaranteed health care for all,??? he said.
The liberals talk about stepping up attacks on political rights in the
name of stopping ???domestic terrorism,??? Studer said. Former Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein claimed a more precise name is ???white
terrorism,??? pushing the notion that racist views held by Caucasians were
responsible for the shootings.
???The liberals ??? and many conservatives ??? want to use these brutal
murders to justify expanding the FBI, the rulers??? political police, to
target people for their ???ideology,?????? Studer said. And the New York
Times?? says free speech is too free. They criticize the Bill of Rights
for its restrictions on government interference with the right to
express one???s opinion.
???The liberal press says nothing about the largest source of shootings
and mass killings in the U.S., which take place in Black communities all
across the country. These don???t fit their agenda,??? he said.
???The SWP explains that there is a road to end anti-social violence,???
Studer said. ???It???s the fight to end capitalism???s exploitation and
oppression, its wars, racism and injustice. As Malcolm X said, it is
struggle that awakens you to your self-worth.
???During the civil rights battles, crimes and shooting in the Black
community plummeted,??? he added. ???Working people had something worth
fighting for and were transformed by the struggle. This is the road
shown by the Cuban Revolution as well. Studer urged participants to,
???Join the SWP campaign!???
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Socialist Workers Party 2019 campaign program
The Socialist Workers Party???s fighting program to confront the economic,
social and moral crisis caused by capitalism: UNIONS Support workers???
struggles to organize and strengthen unions, to use union power to
defend ourselves and all working people. One union for???
In This Issue
Front Page Articles ???Stop the raids! Amnesty for immigrants in the US!
???Protesters in Kashmir say, ???India get out of our country???
???SWP presents working-class candidates, road forward
???Blackjewel miners win solidarity in fight for jobs and stolen wages
??????Workers need to organize unions to fight to change our conditions???
???End censorship of the ???Militant,??? Walmart workers tell Florida prisons
Feature Articles ???Fight to end US embargo of Cuba discussed at Nepal forum
Also In This Issue ???Hong Kong protests demand Beijing grant political rights
???US Steel ???doesn???t care about health of Mon Valley people???
???Layoffs, workers??? debts refute gov???t claims of ???good times???
???Ebola outbreak worsened by wars wracking Congo
???New Puerto Rico governor defends US colonial rule
??????Militant??? reporters head to Puerto Rico
Books of the Month ???Women???s emancipation requires ending domestic servitude
25, 50 and 75 years ago
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York, NY 10018?? -?? themilitant@xxxxxxx
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