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Vol. 79/No. 32      September 14, 2015

 
(lead article, Socialist Workers Party statement)
‘Workers need their own party, a
labor party, based on the unions’

 
Below is a Labor Day statement by John Staggs, Socialist Workers Party candidate for City Council at-large in Philadelphia. Staggs and Osborne Hart, SWP candidate for mayor, work at Walmart and are part of the fight for $15 an hour, full-time work and a union.

No matter where you work today, workers are up against conditions that are getting worse. In response, more and more are saying, “No!” to deepening assaults from the employers and their mouthpieces in the government. Labor resistance and working-class social struggles are on the rise today.

My party, the Socialist Workers Party, urges workers to participate in these battles. Join in solidarity with Steelworkers and Autoworkers, whose contracts run out Sept. 1 and 14, in face of boss demands for deep concessions; with farmworkers in Washington state fighting for higher wages, job protection and a union; with rail workers organizing to defend Tom Harding and Richard Labrie, the train engineer and controller facing frame-up charges by Canadian authorities seeking to scapegoat them for the 2013 derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.

Join actions across the country where African-Americans and others are protesting cop killings of unarmed youth, battles demanding an end to discriminatory victimization and deportations of undocumented workers, in defense of women’s right to choose abortion, and more.

Working people need a program that starts with the needs of the toilers of the world. No to imperialist exploitation of colonial peoples and Washington’s wars for markets and resources, from Afghanistan to Iraq. Open the borders in the U.S. and Europe for those fleeing war and social upheaval from Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.

The Socialist Workers Party fights for a massive, government-funded public works program to put people to work at union wages rebuilding critically needed infrastructure, housing, schools, hospitals and other things workers need.

We call for the formation of a labor party, based on the unions. We need our own party to mobilize our class in action today and points toward the revolutionary overthrow of the dictatorship of capital and establishment of a workers and farmers government.

Through this struggle we are transformed, gaining the capacity to take control of society and work with toilers worldwide in the construction of a socialist society built on human needs, not profits. We have the powerful example of the Cuban Revolution, where workers and farmers overthrew the U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista dictatorship, took power and extended internationalist aid to those in struggle from Angola to Vietnam for more than 55 years.

Join us!
 
 
Related articles:
Communist League candidate backs Quebec taxi drivers
Socialist Workers Party 2005 statement on Hurricane Katrina
Gulf social disaster: ‘Twin capitalist parties at fault, workers need a labor party’
US gov’t snubs Cuban offer to send doctors
Excerpt from the ‘Militant,’ Sept. 26, 2005
Socialist Workers Party kicks off ‘Militant’ drive and nat’l fund
 
 
 
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