BY JIM ALTENBERG
LOS ANGELES - The 1998 Socialist Workers campaign "will be deeply oriented to the working class, to our co-workers, and other fighters in the unions; to the Black community; to farmers and fighting youth," said Norton Sandler. "We will reach out to labor resistance, and discuss why the capitalists' march toward fascism and war is endemic to capitalism itself." Socialist candidates will campaign actively against Washington's war moves in Yugoslavia and Iraq. They will explain why the U.S. ruling class is determined to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the borders of the Russian workers state. "Our campaign starts with the world class struggle. That is what thinking workers are hungry for," Sandler added.

Sandler, a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the International Association of Machinists (IAM), gave the opening political report to the California state nominating convention of the SWP held here April 5. He outlined some of the major themes socialist candidates and campaigners would be taking to working people between now and the November election. Seventy-one people attended the convention, including delegates from SWP branches in San Francisco and Los Angeles; Young Socialists (YS); as well as party supporters and invited guests.

Practically all those attending also took part in a one- day socialist conference the day before. The featured presentations at that event were "Eyewitness to Resistance in Kosovo and Albania," by Militant reporter Argiris Malapanis; "Rebuilding an Anti-Imperialist Youth Movement Worldwide" by Young Socialists leader Jack Willey; and "Cuba in 1998 - 40th Anniversary of the Decisive Battles of the Revolutionary War," by Mary-Alice Waters, the president of Pathfinder Press and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party. (An article on this conference appeared in last week's Militant.)

At the California state convention, delegates nominated Gale Shangold, a garment worker in Los Angeles, to head the Socialist Workers ticket as the party's candidate for governor of California. Jim Gotesky, a member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) in the San Francisco Bay Area, is running for U.S. Senate, and Eli Green, an oil worker and OCAW member in Los Angeles, is the candidate for lieutenant governor.

The Socialist Workers will also field three candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives: Marklyn Wilson in the San Francisco Bay Area; Laura Anderson and Carlos Hernández in Los Angeles. Wilson is a railroad conductor and member of the United Transportation Union. Anderson, an airline ramp worker, is a member of the International Association of Machinists. Hernández, a member of the Young Socialists, is a bilingual education teacher in Los Angeles. Shangold is a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE).

In adopting a plan to launch the campaign immediately, delegates pointed to the wide opportunities open to reach workers and youth coming into struggles today. Sandler pointed out that young people are attracted to a party rooted in industry and with a clear explanation of the world. "The campaign provides a chance to build campus meetings for recruitment to the Young Socialists," said Samantha Kern, a Young Socialists member from San Francisco.

Plans for special campaigning team
Socialist campaign supporters will field a team to the San Joaquin Valley and the strawberry fields around Watsonville, California, where farm workers have been trying to organize themselves into the United Farm Workers union (UFW). Candidates and campaign supporters will begin in Bakersfield, a Valley city of railroad yards, oil production and refining, and agriculture. They will travel up the valley, taking campaign literature, the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, Pathfinder books and pamphlets to the Mexican and Sikh workers who struck the huge poultry processing plants in Fresno and Livingston last year; workers in other agriculture-related industries; farm workers; and students on campuses in Fresno, Modesto, and Turlock. The team will also visit the Watsonville area.

Farm workers have returned to Watsonville after the winter. Sandler reported that they are picking up their organizing efforts. At the end of last season, the UFW did not hold a union representation election in the strawberry fields. The growers, meanwhile, stepped up their attacks against the union, with increased use of antiunion thugs and a demonstration against the UFW in Watsonville itself aimed at intimidating union supporters. Sandler pointed out that as the union makes progress, the growers will not roll over. Along with their goons and thugs, the growers will try to call on Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) cops to deport union activists. The socialist candidates aim to win farm workers to socialism, as well as to promote solidarity among other workers with fighters in the fields. Delegates also decided to organize campaign events at the gate of every factory where socialist workers are presently employed over the next few weeks.

A few days before the convention, University of California officials announced that the incoming freshman class at UC's Berkeley campus would include only 171 Blacks and 574 Latinos. Sharp drops in admission of Blacks, Latinos and American Indians were also registered at UCLA. The announcement was met with protests and marches in Berkeley and elsewhere. The University of California regents had voted to end affirmative action at the university three years ago. In 1996, proposition 209 was adopted, which aimed to ban affirmative action in public agencies across California. Convention participants pointed to a group of Black workers who have taken the Boeing aircraft company to court to protest racist discrimination as another example of the need for the socialist candidates to actively champion affirmative action, and join with those who want to fight around it in the working class and on the campuses.

Defending bilingual education
Sandler took up two ballot propositions that are slated to appear on the June 2 primary election ballot. These initiatives "are designed to put policies into law and go after the rights and confidence of the working class," he said. Proposition 227 aims at eliminating bilingual education. It would require children who do not speak English to learn it in one year in classes not divided by age levels. Teachers who use languages other than English could be sued. Although the ballot measure is directed at immigrants, primarily Latinos, a layer of Latino parents support proposition 227. While the measure has support from rightist "English only" groups, its backers make a point of also promoting Latino spokespeople who argue that their children are not learning English in the current system. Sandler explained that many supporters of 227, like those pressing for vouchers to fund private schools with tax money, see that no real education is going on behind the metal detectors and cops found in every school building in working-class neighborhoods.

"The socialist campaign has to give a serious defense of bilingual education," he said. "Bilingual education was the product of struggles. The right to use your own language at school, work, and in all areas of life is central to combating national oppression."

"The question posed by the fight around bilingual education is equality," said Doug Jenness, the Socialist Workers national campaign director. "The working class has to champion this struggle for equality. Otherwise the employers divide us." Sandler noted that initiatives like proposition 227 give the employers confidence that they can attack workers' rights as well. He referred to a letter he received from a worker at the Veterans' Hospital in Menlo Park, California, where the management recently promulgated an "English only" rule that was directed against Filipino nurses who speak Tagalog among themselves.

Also on the ballot is proposition 226, which is aimed at curtailing the right of unions to contribute money to election campaigns. The measure requires that no dues money be used by a trade union for "political contributions" without the written authorization of each worker involved. Backers of 226, including California governor Peter Wilson, pose as defenders of workers' rights against union officials.

The tens of millions of dollars in union funds spent promoting the capitalist Democratic Party don't advance workers' interests, Sandler said. But this measure is a further step toward the employers and the government involving themselves directly in the affairs of the trade unions. It is an obstacle to the ability of the unions and the working class to function independently of the government.

Proposition 226 also contains a series of reactionary restrictions on campaign contributions from so-called "foreign nationals," including immigrant workers. Its aim is to scapegoat "foreigners and big labor" for the social crisis and governmental corruption in the United States. The Socialist Workers campaign urges working people to vote against propositions 226 and 227.

Convention participants also discussed stepped-up moves by the government to force socialist election campaigns to disclose the names of campaign contributors. Scott Breen, the 1997 SWP candidate for mayor of Seattle, reported on the fight against Seattle election officials' demands for the names and addresses of those who had donated money to the campaign. This fight has attracted widespread support in the Seattle area, forcing the election board to retreat from imposing a $6,000 fine on the socialist campaign.

Jenness told the convention, "We've never, ever disclosed the name of a single contributor," since laws requiring disclosure came into effect 25 years ago. The SWP has been able to win exemption from these laws since 1979, but government election officials "have been trying to find ways to take the exemption away." They say campaign supporters do not face harassment or victimization as in the past, and put the burden on the party to show that harassment continues today. "The Seattle case is the most serious breach of our rights thus far," Jenness added.

"The 1998 campaign will strengthen everything we do," said Sandler. "It will enable us to improve on talking socialism on the job, on campuses, at protest activities and on picket lines." If we carry out an effective campaign, he went on, "we will have more workers and others who look to the SWP and the Militant for clarity and a guide to action."

Jim Altenberg is a member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union in San Francisco.  
 
 
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