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Vol. 77/No. 41      November 18, 2013

(front page)  
‘Working class needs to take political power’
Socialist candidate: ‘SWP campaigns 365 days a year’

Militant/Brian Williams
Dan Fein, left, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New York City mayor, speaks with Jennifer Ulloa, who signed up for Militant subscription, at Frederick Douglass houses Nov. 3.
 
BY JOHN STUDER  
NEW YORK — “The capitalist system is in crisis on a worldwide scale and working people are being laid off, our wages are being cut, our unions are being attacked, we’re being attacked by the police through ‘stop and frisk’ and other repressive measures,” Dan Fein, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of New York, told moderator Errol Louis Oct. 31 on NY1’s “Road to City Hall” program. “This is due to the capitalist system. All the bosses can do, all the government — which belongs to the bosses — can do, is to squeeze more out of working people to try to keep their profits high enough.”

Fein appeared on the program with Libertarian Party mayoral candidate Michael Sanchez and Jimmy McMillan, perennial candidate of The Rent Is Too Damn High Party. The three were among the 15 mayoral candidates on the Nov. 5 ballot. NY1 is the 24-hour news show of Time Warner Cable in New York City.

“Unemployment is the biggest issue and is totally ignored by my opponents,” Fein, 68, an electronic assembly factory worker, said. “We call for a public works program to put the millions of unemployed to work building affordable housing, child care centers, and so forth. This would unite the working class and put us in a stronger position to be able to fight for other issues.”

Fein heads the Socialist Workers Party ticket, which includes John Studer for comptroller and Deborah Liatos for public advocate, as well as Sara Lobman, Seth Galinsky and Róger Calero, running for borough presidents of Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.

The SWP campaign platform supports the struggles of all working people worldwide and opposes Washington’s wars and drone attacks, from Somalia to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The socialist candidates have been speaking out against U.S. military threats against Syria, where millions of workers and farmers have paid a huge price in blood and ruin in their struggle against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

They defend a woman’s right to choose abortion and have used their campaigns to win support in the fight to free the Cuban Five, framed up and imprisoned in the U.S. for their defense of Cuba’s socialist revolution.

“I read where you were surprised, even offended, that Bill de Blasio gets called supposedly a far left candidate,” moderator Louis said.

“He is a bourgeois socialist. He is a candidate that defends capitalism 100 percent,” Fein said. “His party is one of the main capitalist parties which defends this system, which only has war, racism and economic devastation for working people on the agenda for us.

“I’m the candidate who’s for the working class,” Fein said. “When I say socialist I mean the working class taking control of this country, taking control of the economy, and running it in our interests and not in the interests of the big corporations.”

Sanchez said he agreed with Fein that stop and frisk should be ended. “It’s a terrible violation of civil rights.”

McMillan promised that if he were elected mayor, rents would be reduced.

“You think, Mr. Fein, we should not just increase the minimum wage but say double or triple it?” asked Louis.

“Yes. The minimum wage right now is $7.25 an hour. The bosses love that, more money in their pockets,” Fein said. “But it’s devastating for working people, and I was telling Jimmy at the break this is one of the reasons why we can’t pay rent. They don’t pay us enough, and wages are in fact going down if you take inflation into account. So what’s happening is rent goes up, food goes up, gas goes up, wages don’t go up.

“The working class needs, the unions need, to fight for a higher minimum wage,” Fein said, “which would put us in a stronger position and help unify the working class to fight for other things that the working class needs, as far as stopping the deportations, eliminating stop and frisk, and eliminating the superexploitation of working people.

“Now de Blasio and Obama, they want all of $9 an hour, that doesn’t cut it. Try to raise a family in New York on $9 an hour. Doesn’t work,” Fein said.

Both Sanchez and McMillan said they opposed any raise in the minimum wage, which they argued would be bad for business.

“The Socialist Workers Party is a 365-day-a-year party,” Fein said, holding up a copy of the Militant newspaper, wrapping up the program. “We will be campaigning for the working class, joining picket lines and demonstrations and defending the working class, the day before, the day of and the day after the elections.”

On Nov. 3 Fein and supporters campaigned at the Frederick Douglass housing project in Harlem.

Saying she liked Fein’s proposals for fighting for a public works program and a big raise in the minimum wage, Margaret Fields, a library assistant at Columbia University campaigners met at the housing project, took some campaign flyers and a copy of the Militant.

“I’m going to take this stuff in to work and show it around. For both co-workers and students, it’s the perfect paper for them to read,” she told Fein.

Sara Lobman contributed to this article.  
 
 
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