The socialist campaign celebrated a double victory this week in New York, filing more than 30,500 signatures to place the presidential ticket, as well as senatorial candidate Jacob Perasso, on the ballot. Several days later supporters turned in 6,643 signatures for Paul Pederson, SWP candidate in New York's 12th Congressional District. New York election law demands that candidates for statewide election must file 15,000 signatures to secure a ballot slot, and 3,500 to get on the ballot for congress.

At a press conference right after filing, Pederson was interviewed live on WLIB, a talk radio station with a largely Black audience. In response to a question from interviewer Bill Lynch about which congressional committee he would like to sit on, Pederson explained that the socialist campaign was part of helping to advance the struggles of working people in the unions and on the streets. "These are the sort of struggles that can really change society," he said. Pederson pointed to the upcoming August 26 march on Washington against police brutality as an example of the actions the campaign is a part of. Lynch noted the importance of the "Redeem the Dream" march, and urged his listeners to participate.

Asked why he was running against prominent liberal Democrat Nydia Velasquez, Pederson pointed out he was running against both a Democrat and Republican, offering a working-class alternative to the two parties that represent the super-rich minority. He pointed out that liberals play a special role in "helping to keep working people within the Democratic Party and the arms of the two-party system," rather than charting a course of independent working-class political action in their own interests. As resistance by workers and farmers to the attacks by the employers and the government deepen, he said, the necessity and possibility of breaking from the two-party system increase.

Jacob Perasso took advantage of being in the state capital to introduce the socialist campaign to red-shirted pickets on duty outside the Verizon office in downtown Albany. He found strikers interested in a discussion on the roots of the bosses relentless profit drive and its impact on working people.

One striker, who had returned from vacation in Thailand, noted that massive capitalist investment in that country had brought with it large concentrations of industrial workers in urban centers and the possibility of these workers forging powerful unions. Lingering after his picket shift had finished, he explained that he was enjoying the opportunity to "talk about world politics with the socialists."