The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 67/No. 35           October 13, 2003  
 
 
Socialist candidate for
Houston mayor is on ballot
 
BY JACQUIE HENDERSON
AND BRIAN WILLIAMS
 
HOUSTON—Anthony Dutrow, the Socialist Workers candidate for mayor of Houston, is on the ballot for the November 4 election. On September 22, after five weeks of campaigning, the candidate and his supporters filed 3,815 signatures—more than double the city requirement. Three days later the Houston city secretary informed him that he had been certified for ballot status.

After filing the petitions Dutrow was interviewed by Univisión TV Channel 45, and El Día, a Spanish-language daily. Pacifica radio station KPFT reported the filing on their evening news broadcast.

“Only one challenger says he is fighting first and foremost to improve the conditions of working people,” began the KPFT radio evening news report. “Dutrow, a veteran of the U.S. military, calls for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq to Guantánamo Bay. His platform also supports women’s right to choose abortion and calls for debt relief for small farmers.”

Dutrow told the Univisión interviewer that “the Socialist Workers’ campaign presents a fighting working-class alternative to the twin parties of imperialist war, economic exploitation, depression, and racist oppression.”

He added, “More than 2.6 million manufacturing jobs have been eliminated since July 2000—100,000 of these in Texas. My campaign puts forward a Jobs for All! program that calls for a massive program of government-funded public works to build and repair roads, a mass transit system, schools, housing, clinics, and child-care centers, and calls for shorter workweek at union scale to spread around the available work.”

“The Texas law banning undocumented workers from getting drivers’ licenses must be immediately repealed,” Dutrow said, “and the bill that slashes the Children’s Health Insurance Program, cutting off social benefits for 500,000 children in Texas, must also be revoked. These cuts simply compound an already horrendous health-care situation in the state, which has the highest percentage of uninsured children in the nation.”

The evening after the filing Dutrow and campaign supporters participated in a meeting of over 300 people to send off the two busloads of Houston participants going on the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. Dutrow has also spoken out in support of Southwest Airlines flight attendants who picketed Houston Hobby Airport September 18 to bring attention to their demands, including for an end to unpaid overtime. The flight attendants are members of the Transport Workers Union Local 556,

Since filing, Dutrow has received invitations to speak at number of candidates’ forums, including a debate organized by a local cable access station. The Houston Chronicle editors will interview him, With the other candidates, on October 3. A tape of the event will be broadest on the municipal cable station.  
 
 
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