Vol. 72/No. 24      June 16, 2008

The two-day conference was called to organize opposition to the federal government takeover of Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

Chauncey Robinson, a leader of the Young Socialists from San Francisco, accompanied Calero on his five-day visit to Sydney. She spoke at the Black rights conference May 24, expressing her appreciation at being able to learn more about the struggles of Aboriginal people, noting that their fight was “part of the same worldwide struggle” of working people against the attacks by the bosses and their governments.

The two socialists joined a teachers’ protest rally May 22 of more than 2,000. It was the main action of a one-day statewide strike by high school and technical college teachers against proposed changes to school staffing arrangements by the state Labor government. Transfers of teachers to schools in remote, regional and urban working class areas will be adversely affected under the plan.

Calero and Robinson were invited by Clare Corbould, a lecturer in U.S. and African American history, to address a class of about 150 students at Sydney University.

Calero had three radio interviews, including in Spanish on SBS, a national network.

At a Militant Labor Forum, Calero and Robinson were joined on the platform by Linda Harris, Communist League candidate for Bankstown city council.

The event was attended by 27 people, including immigrant workers from Niger, Sierra Leone, Chile, El Salvador, Indonesia, and the Solomon Islands.
 

The candidate was speaking at a meeting hosted May 19 by the Students Association at the University of Auckland. He was accompanied by Chauncey Robinson, a leader of the Young Socialists in San Francisco.

“Working people need to chart a course of class independence from the capitalist parties,” Calero replied. “These parties can’t be pressured or reformed—they represent the interests of the wealthy handful of families that rule the United States.”

“Our campaign focuses on the need for the trade unions to break with the Democrats and Republicans,” he said. “We need a labor party based on unions that defend workers from the unrelenting offensive of the employers. Struggles by working people in the United States will never win if they remain tied to the Democrats and Republicans.”

“We are running a serious campaign to win,” he continued. “The socialist platform offers the only solutions to the grinding unemployment, low wages, speedup, and unsafe work conditions faced by our class.”

Calero returned to this point later that day at a meeting hosted by the university’s Centre for Latin American Studies. He said a labor party would campaign for legalization of undocumented immigrants, in order to defend the unity of the class from the bosses’ attempts to pit worker against worker.

“The bosses have used immigration to try to drive down wages and they’ve become dependent on immigrants’ labor,” explained Calero. “Raids and deportations are not aimed at throwing immigrants out of the country, but at intimidating workers and promoting divisions. That’s why the fight for legalization is a decisive question for the working class as a whole.”

The candidate took up this question at a meeting the next day hosted by the Pacific Media Centre at the Auckland University of Technology. “A vanguard layer in the working class is emerging,” he explained. “The fight of undocumented workers illustrates this. It’s the most important fight in the U.S. class struggle today. It points the road to the transformation of the labor movement that is essential to the advances working people need to make.”
 
 
Related articles:
Socialist Workers file petitions for ballot status in New Jersey
Socialist vice-presidential candidate speaks to meat packers, restaurant workers in Twin Cities  
 
 
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