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Vol. 75/No. 30      August 22, 2011

 
Socialist in NY campaigns
for jobs, workers power
 
BY PAUL MAILHOT  
BROOKLYN, New York—“Workers need candidates who will stick with low-income people,” said Lloyd Wright to Chris Hoeppner, Socialist Workers Party nominee for U.S. Congress in the 9th District here. Wright, who works with Hoeppner at a nearby electronics plant, stopped to talk with the socialist candidate when he was campaigning at the Sheepshead Bay subway station.

Hoeppner said the jobs crisis is tearing apart the working class. “I’m using my campaign to present a jobs program, something no capitalist politician, Democrat or Republican, is seriously talking about,” he told Wright.

“We need a massive, federally funded public works program putting millions of unemployed to work in productive labor. This is something the working class can fight for to defend us from the consequences of this crisis.”

Hoeppner said the capitalist system must be replaced. “Workers need to fight to take political power from the class of propertied families who exploit us. Once we do that, we can use that power to address all questions from the point of view of what benefits the vast majority of humanity.”

Wright and Eye Liwn, another coworker who stopped by, agreed with the socialist candidate that a jobs program has to be fought for. “I hope you’ll come into work early and discuss these ideas with other workers in the plant,” Wright said.

Carlos Palomino, an electrician, also spoke with Hoeppner. Noting the recent stock market plunge, Palomino said that to solve the crisis “we need to bring back the factories” to the United States. He said he liked a lot of what the socialist candidate was saying but was worried “so many jobs are leaving this country, going to China.”

“Capitalists invest where they think they’ll make the most profit,” Hoeppner said. “That’s why they’re not opening new factories. Workers are never going to be able to fight if we scapegoat one another for problems created by the capitalist system. The bosses want us fighting each other, to divide us. Solidarity with struggles of toilers all over the world is our only effective means to fight.”

This has been a busy week for Hoeppner and the socialist campaign. The candidate marched with hospital workers and people from the Far Rockaway community protesting the closing of Peninsula Hospital Center August 3. He also joined picket lines of Verizon workers, who began a strike August 7 against the company’s assault on their living standards and job conditions.  
 
 
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