The Socialist Workers Party is fielding 53 candidates in 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia this fall. These candidates offer a working-class alternative to the twin parties of U.S. imperialism—the Democrats and Republicans—and other capitalist parties.

The socialists are presenting a revolutionary working-class program in the U.S. to reach out to our sisters and brothers around the world in order to strengthen the struggle against our common enemies—the imperialist aggressors and capitalist exploiters the world over.

The socialists have been calling for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. and other “coalition” troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Colombia, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. They have been saying: “U.S. hands off Korea! Lift the sanctions! All U.S. troops and weapons out of the Korean peninsula! Reunification of Korea!” They have been campaigning to oppose U.S. threats against Iran and to demand an end to Washington’s economic war on Cuba and to its course of aggression against Venezuela. They have championed independence for Puerto Rico from U.S. colonial rule.

These assaults, including the bloody Israeli war on Lebanon that Washington openly backed, are part of the U.S. rulers’ “long war.” This decades-long conflict has barely begun. The imperialist rulers will attack with particular ferocity those who refuse to bow to their dictates, like the working people of Cuba targeted for making the first socialist revolution in the Americas.

The imperialist wars abroad are an extension of the attacks by the bosses at home on the wages, pensions, health care, safety, and dignity of working people.

The SWP platform starts by extending support to struggles by workers to organize unions and mobilize union power to defend working people from the bosses’ assaults. It calls for fighting for legislation to legalize all immigrants now. It says workers need a union to enforce safety. In order to defend the labor movement from the offensive by the employers and their twin parties, it calls for building a labor party, based on the unions, that fights in the interests of workers and farmers.

The SWP candidates have also campaigned for the political rights of all. The SWP campaign in Pennsylvania set an outstanding example, successfully challenging the state’s “loyalty oath,” which required candidates for public office to swear they are not “subversives.” That victory for labor removed an obstacle to political activity by candidates like those on the SWP ticket who advocate revolutionary change: taking power from the handful of capitalist families in the United States and establishing a workers and farmers government.

Vote SWP! And join socialist candidates and their supporters to continue fighting for the same program after November 7!
 
 
Related articles:
SWP candidate for San Francisco school board: ‘U.S. troops, arms out of Korea!’
Socialist Workers Party candidates in 2006  
 
 
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