Vol. 73/No. 33      August 31, 2009

The Socialist Workers ticket of Fein, Maura DeLuca for public advocate, and Tom Baumann for Manhattan borough president, is on the November ballot.

Fein and Baumann went to the Bronx August 14 to meet workers casting their votes in a hotly contested union election at FlatRate Moving Co. Several workers told the candidates they were fired after joining the union organizing drive there. (See story on page 4.)

“The bosses are threatened when workers have more power over working conditions,” Fein told the union backers. “Only by organizing can you have the power to resist what the company is doing to you every day. We need more and stronger unions.”

“The bosses and their government offer many excuses for the crisis,” Fein said. “They blame the previous Bush administration, bad banking practices, or foreign competition. But the economic and social crisis we face today is a crisis of their system—capitalism. The working class needs to take political power so we can organize in the interests of the majority.”

Earlier in the day, Fein and Baumann taped an interview with Pearl Phillip, managing editor of the Caribbean American Weekly. It airs on the “Community Dateline” show on AllBlackRadio.com. They explained the socialist campaign platform, their opposition to the U.S. imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, and highlighted some of the immediate demands they raise to unite working people.

On August 16 campaigners for the socialist ticket joined the “Festival of the Sun” in Manhattan. Construction workers, day laborers, garment workers, and office cleaners, among others, attended the festival, which featured music and dance from Mexico.

After taking a campaign flyer or buying a copy of the Militant or a subscription, festival participants often told the socialist campaigners about the conditions on the jobs where they work. Many undocumented immigrants in the construction industry work nonunion, making just over half what union construction workers earn.

“That’s why we say legalize undocumented workers now with no restrictions and stop the deportations,” Baumann said. “The bosses want a section of workers they can superexploit. The unions should organize all workers, with or without papers, in a common fight to raise everyone to union scale.”

DeLuca will fly to Omaha, Nebraska, August 28 to join the defense of an abortion clinic there run by Dr. LeRoy Carhart. Operation Rescue, a rightist group that opposes legal abortion, announced it will protest outside the clinic after Carhart said he will open a second clinic in Wichita, Kansas, to perform late-term abortions.

“The right to choose abortion is key to the fight for women’s rights,” DeLuca said. “The working class can never be free if women are not free.” The socialist candidate for public advocate is encouraging others to also go to Omaha.

The Socialist Workers candidates are backing the ongoing fight to free Troy Davis, who has been in jail in Georgia since 1989 on frame-up charges of murdering a cop in Savannah, Georgia. Davis is Black; the cop was white.

Davis’s supporters are organizing a march on Washington September 26 to oppose his execution and to demand his freedom. “The recent Supreme Court decision ordering the Federal District Court in Georgia to review the evidence in the case is an important victory,” Fein said. “I will be marching in Washington, D.C., to demand ‘Free Troy Davis Now! Abolish the death penalty!’ The socialist campaign will be working to get as many people from New York and the region to join this action as we can.”

The socialist candidates and their supporters will also march as a campaign contingent with banners and distribute literature at the West Indian American Day Carnival September 7 in Brooklyn.
 
 
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