Both she and her daughter signed petitions to place the Socialist Workers Party slate on the ballot in the New York City elections. They were drawn to the SWP platform’s support to workers’ struggles to organize unions and to use and extend union power to defend themselves and other working people from the bosses’ assaults.

As this issue goes to press today, SWP campaign supporters have collected more than 13,000 signatures after nine days of petitioning. Campaigners plan to collect 20,000 signatures by the end of the July 23-24 weekend—well more than double the 7,500 required for ballot status.

The remark by the AFSCME member was typical to the response Socialist Workers campaigners received as dozens fanned out across the city, distributing campaign literature and collecting signatures on petitions.

“Democratic and Republican politicians propose ‘American’ solutions to deal with the crisis caused by the capitalist system,” Koppel told a college student who stopped by a campaign table in Washington Heights to find out more about what the socialists stand for. “But there are no ‘American’ solutions that will benefit working people. Our class has no common interests with the capitalists who rule this country—and everything in common with fellow workers around the world. That is why our campaign platform begins with the needs of working people in the world.”

The student replied, “That’s all I need to hear to sign your petition.” She offered to help out on the campaign.

Koppel also condemned the current efforts by authorities in Farmingville, Long Island, to evict immigrant day laborers from their homes on the pretext of cracking down on overcrowded housing. The government is carrying out a demand that ultraright, anti-immigrant groups have pushed for as part of their scapegoating of foreign-born workers for crime, unemployment, and other social problems.

“This too is a union question,” Koppel said. “It points to the pressing need to organize these workers into unions to fight for improved wages and conditions. And it underscores the need to mobilize the whole labor movement to fight for jobs and decent housing for millions through a massive, federally funded public works program, and to oppose the physical assaults on immigrants in Farmingville by fascist-minded groups.”

Later, the Washington Heights campaign team was approached by Rafael de Castro, a parking garage attendant, who offered to sign up some people he knew. He passed around the petition boards to four friends who all signed, as he said, “It’s for a workers party.”

Campaigning in the mid-Manhattan Garment District, Maura DeLuca, 26, reported, “I got quite a positive response from garment workers going in and coming out of work. Many of them were glad to hear about the socialist campaign and a high percentage signed the petitions.”

Randy Gopaul, 30, from South Ozone Park in Queens, first learned about the Socialist Workers campaign after receiving a copy of the party’s platform from a team of campaigners at Union Square.

“After reading the section of the brochure that said, ‘we need to build a revolutionary movement that will lead a fight by working people and their allies to take power out of the hands of the ruling billionaire class, establish a workers and farmers government, and join the worldwide struggle for socialism,’ I knew this was a movement I wanted to be part of,” he said.

Gopaul, originally from Guyana, was one of the nearly 100 people who attended a July 16 Militant Labor Forum featuring a talk by veteran SWP leader Tom Leonard on “Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialism.” He joined in one of the petitioning teams the following day.
 
 
Related articles:
Pittsburgh: Socialists score victory for political rights
County accepts petition for ballot status with ‘anti-subversive’ pledge crossed out
SWP announces slate in Seattle city elections
Socialist Workers Party wins exemption in Seattle from disclosing campaign donors  
 
 
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