The following article appeared October 13 in the Sioux City Journal. It is based on an interview with Lisa Rottach, Socialist Workers candidate for governor of Nebraska.
 
BY MIKE KOEHLER  
SIOUX CITY, Iowa--Socialist Workers party candidate Lisa Rottach is running for governor of Nebraska in a revolutionary struggle for the rights of workers and farmers.

Employed on the kill floor of an Omaha meatpacker, Rottach is running against the two major party candidates: Republican Governor Mike Johanns and Democratic challenger Stormy Dean. She and her campaign staff have been door knocking at South Sioux City mobile home parks and doing meet-and-greets with IBP Inc. employees at shift change time.

"We think working people need a voice that speaks clearly in the interest of our class, which is the working class," she said. "Running for governor is a vehicle for us to bring our program of revolutionary struggle to as wide of an audience as we can."

Rottach said the Socialist Workers campaign is part of building a movement of young workers and students who will be in the struggle for a workers and farmers government to take power out of the hands of ruling capitalist families.

"We join with the unbreakable fight of the Palestinian people for their land and against Israeli government brutality; with mobilizations of working people across Latin America against the imperialist-imposed social catastrophe; and with the people of Cuba, Iran, Iraq and North Korea standing up to the economic and military threats of Washington," she said.

The Socialists Workers explain that capitalism has nothing to offer working people and youth--either at home or abroad. Rottach also said the Socialist Workers campaign offers a revolutionary program to unite working people around the world in a common struggle that can defeat the super-wealthy ruling class.

Her major campaign points include:

--Saying no to "Washington’s imperialist war drive"

--Jobs for all and shortening the workweek with no cut in pay while raising the minimum wage;

--Stopping INS raids and deportations and ending Social Security "no match let--ters" and driver’s license denials;

--Fighting police brutality and abolishing the death penalty;

--Defending workers’ rights;

--Defending a woman’s access to abortion;

--Stopping farm foreclosures while implementing debt relief;

--Defending affirmative action, including employment, housing and education;

--Cancelling the Third World debt;

--Stopping Washington’s economic war on Cuba while normalizing relations.

"What our campaign speaks to is that capitalism has nothing to offer humanity," she said. "It is leading humanity to economic depression and war."

She said capitalism is a system that is no longer capable of bringing progress to the world’s population. Because of this, she said, it is important for workers and farmers to unite in a struggle to reach out in solidarity for strikers, students protesting budget cuts and black farmers fighting racist discrimination of the USDA. These people need to fight the ruling class, she said. These are a handful of billionaire families that control the means of production and concentrate the wealth of the world.

She said the capitalists are waging a war here in the United States against workers’ rights.

"We see that in stepped-up police brutality," she said. "We see the police as an institution which defends the interests of the ruling class and their private property. Their job is to mete out punishment on the spot, to terrorize working people, to put us in our place and to make it more difficult for workers to organize and defend our interests."

Capitalists are also engaged in wars of conquest, Rottach said. The current example of this is the impending war on "the people of Iraq." Her campaign points out that capitalists are in a state of perpetual war. It is the only solution that the Democrats and Republicans can put out.

Socialists see war with Iraq as one of conquest and occupation because of the concentration of oil reserves in the Middle East. She also said the capitalist United States is in competition with its imperial rivals such as the Germans, French and the English for the world’s resources. This will lead to a world economic depression and wars.

Rottach uses Cuba as an example of how a revolutionary socialist system has worked despite an economic war by the United States. She said the people receive education and healthcare from the government while the farmers are respected and cannot lose their land. As governor of Nebraska, Rottach said, she would use the office to further the ideals of the revolutionary struggle for workers and farmers.  
 
 
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