August 14, 2000
For immediate release: For more information contact: Mary Martin
202-722-6221

Socialist Workers Campaign Files 4,400 Signatures on Petitions to Place Presidential Ticket on D.C. Ballot

Supporters of the Socialist Workers 2000 campaign filed 4,400 signatures on petitions today to place the Party's presidential ticket of James Harris for President and Margaret Trowe for Vice President on the D.C. ballot. That number is well over the required 3,320 signatures. This successful ballot effort ensures that working people will have a voice in this years' election.

Harris is a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) on leave from his job in Atlanta at a large garment distribution center of the Marshalls retail chain. Trowe is a meat packer at Quality Pork Processors, the slaughterhouse for Hormel Foods, organized by Local 9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) in Austin, Minnesota.

Harris along with socialist candidates throughout the Northeast have joined telephone workers on the picket lines in their strike against Bell Atlantic/Verizon. The socialist campaign supports the organizing efforts of janitors at Catholic University in their fight for a living wage, better working conditions and a union. These fights are part of a new pattern of struggle by working people, from the successful organizing drive at Dakota Premium Beef in South St. Paul, Minnesota, to the strike victories by the United Mine Workers union members against Pittsburg and Midway Coal in Wyoming and New Mexico, to the fight of unionized miners in defense of their hard won cradle to grave healthcare coverage, and to the militant organizing effort of mostly immigrant Haitian garment workers against Tartan Textile in Pompano Beach, Florida.

Through common struggles, growing numbers of immigrant workers are helping to reshape the US working class. In these battles they are gaining confidence and contributing valuable experience from struggles in their countries to a growing vanguard of fighters.

The socialist candidates campaign against the death penalty, a barbaric weapon of terror wielded in the interest of the ruling rich. Cop brutality and killings of workers is part of this seamless policy meted out on the streets daily by cops who act as judge, jury and executioner. The socialist candidates have joined protests against police brutality from actions against those who fatally shot Amadou Diallo, tens of thousands who rallied against the choking death of Frederick Finley in Dearborn, Michigan by a security guard to the thousands who condemned the brutal shooting and beating of Thomas Jones in Philadelphia. The campaign is actively building the National Rally Against Racial Profiling and Police Brutality to take place here on August 26th.

"The capitalist candidates, Gore, Bush, Buchanan and Nader, lament that working people are being left behind in the current economic expansion. But the truth is that this economic expansion has been made possible only at the expense of working people, through driving down wages, increasing work loads, attacking our unions, and by making us work harder and longer to the very point of injury to our own bodies," said Sam Manuel the party's candidate for DC Delegate to the House of Representatives who is currently petitioning for a ballot spot. Manuel is a CSXT railroad freight conductor and member of the United Transportation Union (UTU).

Both Harris and Trowe participated in a recent delegation of US farmers who visited revolutionary Cuba. The delegations were able to meet fellow farmers and workers in Cuba and learn of the advances they have made as a result of the workers and farmers revolution in that Latin American nation. Through their campaign socialist candidates will explain why working people in this country should join efforts to end the embargo and lift the travel ban against Cuba.

The socialist candidates will speak out against Washington's military moves around the world from Iraq to Bosnia and Sierra Leone. They have been active in actions in this country opposing the US Naval occupation and bombing of the Puerto Rican Island of Vieques. They support independence for the island nation. The socialist candidates strongly back the fight of the Palestinian people and the Arab peoples throughout the Middle East in their fight against the US backed Israeli settler regime and for the return of their lands. The socialist candidates will use this campaign to win support for the September 16 rally in Washington, DC for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands.

The socialist candidates condemn the actions of members of Congress and the Mayor in blocking a city bill fought for by women's health organizations that would mandate employers and health care insurers to cover prescribed contraceptives. The blocking of this bill is part of the ongoing attack on the fundamental right of a woman to control her own body a right codified in the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision which was won through massive mobilizations of women and men in the streets. The intervention by members of Congress is one more assault on the democratic rights of working people in this city. The socialist candidates will campaign for statehood for the District. 
 
 
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