By Emma Johnson
The heart of the drive is taking the Militant and Pathfinder Press books on revolutionary, working-class politics onto workers’ doorsteps in cities and rural areas.
The campaign is getting a boost as the Socialist Workers Party is fielding candidates for governor and other offices in the elections. The SWP in California announced Ellie García for governor there. Miami socialists are running Naomi Craine for Florida governor.
These campaigns urge independent working-class political action and point a road toward the fight for workers power.
The SWP candidates champion the fight by Ukrainian toilers to defend their country’s sovereignty and are taking advantage of the increased openings to build the fight to free the Cuban Five and discuss the Cuban Revolution they were imprisoned for defending.
García and Craine advance demands for workers control of production in order to defend life and limb, and society, from speedup, dangerous working conditions and threats to the land and environment. They push for government-funded medical care for all in opposition to Obamacare, a system organized to boost profits for insurance and drug companies and to put the burden for health care on individual workers.
Read the full article here.
The California deadline for a group to become ballot-qualified is in July in presidential years, but was in January for 2014. Anyway the Socialist Workers Party does not even file as a “political body”, which, if it did, would require election officials to tally how many people register into the Socialist Workers Party. All it takes is a letter to the Secretary of State. Garcia could have been on the June primary ballot by paying the filing fee and submitting 65 signatures, but her ballot label would have been “no party preference”, instead of “Socialist Workers.”
García will have to run as a write-in in the top-two primary. Write-ins are not permitted in the general election. Craine will likely run as a write-in in the general election as well, though I believe there is still time for she & the SWP to become ballot-qualified.