A party conference in the Bay Area the last week of April named Dennis Richter, a meat packer and member of the SWP National Committee, as the Socialist Workers candidate for Treasurer of the city and county of San Francisco.

The first week of May, Deborah Liatos, a coal miner and member of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in the Craig, Colorado, area, was named SWP candidate for Board of Education in Moffat County.

Meanwhile, SWP campaign supporters have launched petitioning efforts to put Socialist Workers candidates on the ballot in New Jersey and Boston.

“Socialist campaigners in New Jersey have been getting a good response while soapboxing and reaching out with the party’s platform—which presents a working-class alternative to the Democrats, Republicans, and all capitalist parties—through street tables, on campuses, and in workers districts,” said Ved Dookhun, SWP campaign director in that state. “The petitioning effort to collect 1,600 signatures to put Angela Lariscy on the ballot and another 200 for Michael Ortega—double the state requirements—begins on Saturday, May 7.” Lariscy is the party’s candidate for New Jersey governor and Ortega the SWP candidate for State Assembly in the 28th District.

Supporters of the Socialist Workers campaign plan to finish the ballot drive in New Jersey in one week. “We will celebrate the successful completion of the petitioning drive at a campaign forum on Friday, May 13,” said Dookhun.

In Boston, petitioners plan to collect 1,000 signatures to put on the ballot Laura Garza, Socialist Workers candidate for city council at-large. Backers of the campaign of Garza, who is running along with Margaret Trowe, the party’s candidate for mayor of Boston, plan to collect the targeted number of signatures, again double the city’s requirement, by May 22.

At the same time, SWP candidates in other cities have been taking their campaign to picket lines and other struggles by working people. On April 28, for example, Martín Koppel, who is running for New York City mayor on the Socialist Workers ticket, joined a picket line of striking workers at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near the La Guardia airport in Queens. The workers are fighting to win recognition of their union, UNITE-HERE. A year after winning a union representation election, the bosses have refused to negotiate a contract on the terms the workers demand.

“People were not being paid for work,” Francesca Barahona, one of the strikers who worked in housecleaning, told Koppel. “They would make us punch out and then work more to finish cleaning the rooms. We also have a very expensive medical plan. It costs some of us $100 a week and most workers make about $300 a week.”

Koppel responded that conditions these workers face are similar to those of millions of others. That’s why the SWP candidates champion support for workers struggles to organize unions and use and extend union power to defend themselves from the bosses’ assaults, he added.

Juan Mercedes, another striker who works in the hotel laundry, agreed. “I’ve heard a lot of other workers in this city—in the supermarkets and other places—saying, ‘Yes, we need a union too.’”

“Organizing unions and mobilizing union power is essential for defending the labor movement from the offensive by the employers and their twin parties of capitalism—the Democrats and Republicans,” Koppel continued. “Out of such struggles, it becomes more apparent that workers need to organize independently of the bosses on the political arena also; that is, to build a labor party based on the unions that fights in the interests of working people year-round.”

The Socialist Workers campaign starts with the world, Koppel pointed out. “We support the effort of countries that are oppressed by imperialism to develop the energy sources they need, including nuclear power, to expand access to electricity,” he said. “This is essential for economic and social development and to help bridge the gap between the imperialist and semicolonial world. We oppose the drive by Washington and its imperialist allies, in the name of ‘nuclear nonproliferation,’ to use their economic and military might to block these efforts.”

For more information on how to join socialist petitioning efforts and other campaigning by SWP candidates, contact Socialist Workers campaign supporters nearest you (see directory).

Paul Pederson contributed to this article.  
 
 
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