Iowa: Socialists campaign door to door, workers sign to put candidates on ballot

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DES MOINES, Iowa — “The heart of our campaign has been going door to door talking with workers throughout the city,” Margaret Trowe, one of three Socialist Workers Party candidates for city council here, told 30 people packed into the campaign headquarters Aug. 10 for a fundraising dinner and meeting to hear the candidates and discuss the two-day drive to put them on the ballot.

“We decided to organize gathering signatures to get on the ballot the same way,” Trowe said, “and it was an unqualified success.”

Four hundred twenty-five people in Des Moines signed up to put Trowe, Ellen Brickley and David Rosenfeld on the ballot — 165 more than the number required. Twenty-one volunteers from Omaha, Neb.; Twin Cities, Minn.; Chicago; and New York joined campaigners in Des Moines.

While campaigning, supporters sold 13 subscriptions to the Militant, 31 copies of the paper, and five books, including Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power and The Cuban Five.

“We talked to fellow workers about the need to raise the minimum wage and to fight for a massive government-funded jobs program,” Brickley told those at the meeting. “By doing it door to door we got into a lot of rich discussions about what workers are going through, what they are thinking and about our program to build working-class solidarity and confidence along the road to the fight for workers power. Nearly everyone we spoke with signed our petitions.”

Addressing the rally, Jacob Perasso, who ran for city council in Omaha earlier this year, described the work of building the Socialist Workers Party there.

“The rulers have indicated that they do not appreciate the SWP being in Omaha,” said Perasso, commenting on the party’s response to a July 16 political break-in into his home. The culprit left political files strewn about the apartment, while ignoring valuable items in plain sight, he said. The only thing taken was a cellphone containing the records of phone calls and emails Perasso made while participating in a fight against police brutality in north Omaha.

“We pushed the attack back by responding right away, getting the word out widely and stepping up our political campaigning in working-class areas,” he explained. “We put the rulers on notice that we will not be intimidated. Now we are moving forward to establish a branch of the Socialist Workers Party in Omaha, open up a public campaign headquarters and run candidates in the next election.”

Dan Fein, SWP candidate for mayor of New York who flew in to help, described his participation in a delegation to Egypt to express solidarity with workers and farmers there who defended their political space by mobilizing in massive numbers to oust the increasingly unpopular Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi. “We found the biggest gain is increased confidence of the working class,” said Fein.

“I am proud to call Maggie Trowe, David Rosenfeld, and Ellen Brickley my sisters, brother, and comrades in the struggle for the working class,” Buddy Howard, president of the Lee County Labor Council, said in a message to the meeting. Howard explained that he had met the SWP when “me and 237 of my fellow workers were unjustly locked out of our jobs” by Roquette America at its corn processing plant in Keokuk, Iowa, from September 2010 to July 2011.

“I have had the privilege of traveling with them to other struggles,” Howard wrote. “Just look at their platform, whether it’s defending a woman’s right to choose abortion or defending the Cuban Five.

“Finally someone speaks with honesty,” he said, “who doesn’t bow down to the minimum ‘two parties,’ who will never obsequiously succumb to the powers that be.”

Campaigner Helen Meyers met Dan Englstrom, 25, after knocking on his apartment door. “If the minimum wage was raised it would mean I wouldn’t have to decide whether I was going to eat or pay my bills or have anything else left over,” Englstrom, who works at McDonald’s making $7.50 per hour, told Meyers.

Fein and fellow campaigner Jacquie Henderson talked with waitress Kelly Vincent on her porch about the fight of fast-food workers for $15 per hour and a union. “I am very much for that,” said Vincent, who makes $4.35 an hour. “They say we can make up the difference to the $7.25 an hour minimum wage with tips. But we can’t live on that.”
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http://www.themilitant.com/2013/7731/773104.html
 
I wish Socialists would come around here. If they can campaign in a red state like Iowa, they ought to be able to come to the rural areas in Pennsylvania and talk to the farming folk here.

Just don't mention guns. That's the #1 reason people vote GOP in our neck of Penn's Woods. We are into hunting and fishing...we aren't the crazy militia types though.
 
Steelplate said:
I wish Socialists would come around here. If they can campaign in a red state like Iowa, they ought to be able to come to the rural areas in Pennsylvania and talk to the farming folk here.

Just don't mention guns. That's the #1 reason people vote GOP in our neck of Penn's Woods. We are into hunting and fishing...we aren't the crazy militia types though.
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Guns have never been a big issue for socialists. If it's a rational policy, I'd be willing to make big concessions to the right - and I'm sure the same is true about a lot of us.
 
Rose said:
Guns have never been a big issue for socialists. If it's a rational policy, I'd be willing to make big concessions to the right - and I'm sure the same is true about a lot of us.
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Yeah....I think the gun control push cones from inner city folk that have their hands so full from gang violence that they don't know what else to do.
 
Steelplate said:
Yeah....I think the gun control push cones from inner city folk that have their hands so full from gang violence that they don't know what else to do.
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Hmm. Personally I think it comes down to what Owen said. There won't be such violence if the benefits of modern society are shared properly. If folks have a job they enjoy; if places of work are also places of education and creative expression; if everyone is guaranteed a basic standard of living; if political control is direct and open equally to all; if streets are clean; if food is wholesome; if schools are individual-centric and of of high standards; if healthcare, both physical and mental, is provided; if this becomes the case for all (if not most) people, gun violence won't plauge us as it does now.

A garden is a good metaphor for society. Because unless the plants have the right external conditions, and unless they don't compete with each other, they won't thrive.
 
as posted on another thread - poverty tends to lead to violence in places where there is disparity of income, so I agree, Rose. If youth in urban poor areas had a way to get jobs and share in some of the good stuff, there would be less violence.
 
tekkychick said:
as posted on another thread - poverty tends to lead to violence in places where there is disparity of income, so I agree, Rose. If youth in urban poor areas had a way to get jobs and share in some of the good stuff, there would be less violence.
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That's it exactly. The question now, as always, is how to achieve that. And while I think groups like the SWP are taking steps, I'm no optimist.
 
Steelplate said:
I wish Socialists would come around here. If they can campaign in a red state like Iowa, they ought to be able to come to the rural areas in Pennsylvania and talk to the farming folk here.

Just don't mention guns. That's the #1 reason people vote GOP in our neck of Penn's Woods. We are into hunting and fishing...we aren't the crazy militia types though.
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Two views -

Marx
"There are no circumstances imaginable, not even victory, under which the proletariat should give up its possession of arms."

Chomsky
As for guns being the way to respond to this, that's outlandish. First of all, this is not a weak Third World country. If people have pistols, the government has tanks. If people get tanks, the government has atomic weapons. There's no way to deal with these issues by violent force, even if you think that that's morally legitimate. Guns in the hands of American citizens are not going to make the country more benign. They're going to make it more brutal, ruthless and destructive. So while one can recognize the motivation that lies behind some of the opposition to gun control, I think it's sadly misguided.

The point is, there is no firm socialist position on gun control.

If you look through the DSA website, you'll find that gun control is hardly mentioned.
http://www.dsausa.org/
 
Steelplate said:
I wish Socialists would come around here. If they can campaign in a red state like Iowa, they ought to be able to come to the rural areas in Pennsylvania and talk to the farming folk here.

Just don't mention guns. That's the #1 reason people vote GOP in our neck of Penn's Woods. We are into hunting and fishing...we aren't the crazy militia types though.
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Iowa is not a red State dude. Iowa may be sparsely populated but most of the people live there in cities and suburban regions. They have only voted Republican for President once in the last 24 years. Republican candidates have won there once in the last 7 presidential elections.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Iowa is not a red State dude. Iowa may be sparsely populated but most of the people live there in cities and suburban regions. They have only voted Republican for President once in the last 24 years. Republican candidates have won there once in the last 7 presidential elections.
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I did not know that.

Thanks
 
Steelplate said:
Yeah....I think the gun control push cones from inner city folk that have their hands so full from gang violence that they don't know what else to do.
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It's an issue where as a suburbanite I see a lot of disconnect. Many rural Americans have a very close tradition of hunting and living in isolated regions in which they have no one to provide defense for them. Many to just hear the term "gun control" is a knee jerk response as to what they feel is a threat to an inalienable right. Then their are the city folk who do have their hands full with well armed gangs (Crips, Bloods, Outlaws, Mongols, M3, etc,.) and you see the city people disconnected from understanding guns and tradition in rural Americans and Rural Americans are disconnected because they don't have communities over run by violent gang-bangers. It's an understandable disconnect though.
 
blackascoal said:
Two views -

Marx
"There are no circumstances imaginable, not even victory, under which the proletariat should give up its possession of arms."

Chomsky
As for guns being the way to respond to this, that's outlandish. First of all, this is not a weak Third World country. If people have pistols, the government has tanks. If people get tanks, the government has atomic weapons. There's no way to deal with these issues by violent force, even if you think that that's morally legitimate. Guns in the hands of American citizens are not going to make the country more benign. They're going to make it more brutal, ruthless and destructive. So while one can recognize the motivation that lies behind some of the opposition to gun control, I think it's sadly misguided.

The point is, there is no firm socialist position on gun control.

If you look through the DSA website, you'll find that gun control is hardly mentioned.
http://www.dsausa.org/
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It's important to note that Marx grew up in an age where empires could be overthrown by popular uprisings. "The inevitability of revolution" was very much a factor in his writings. And Chomsky, faced with vastly more powerful regimes, and populations who can't envision a revolution in their lifetimes, has had to adapt socialism to the modern era.

So I think the answer has to be in the middle. We shouldn't be taking a Marxist stance, trying to keep guns for a revolution. But radical prohibition isn't a plan either. It was good of you to bring up DSA. I personally admire its policy of sticking to issues socialists are comfortable with, and trying not to alienate anybody in the guns debate.
 
Rose said:
It's important to note that Marx grew up in an age where empires could be overthrown by popular uprisings. "The inevitability of revolution" was very much a factor in his writings. And Chomsky, faced with vastly more powerful regimes, and populations who can't envision a revolution in their lifetimes, has had to adapt socialism to the modern era.

So I think the answer has to be in the middle. We shouldn't be taking a Marxist stance, trying to keep guns for a revolution. But radical prohibition isn't a plan either. It was good of you to bring up DSA. I personally admire its policy of sticking to issues socialists are comfortable with, and trying not to alienate anybody in the guns debate.
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I agree with every single word of that.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Iowa is not a red State dude. Iowa may be sparsely populated but most of the people live there in cities and suburban regions. They have only voted Republican for President once in the last 24 years. Republican candidates have won there once in the last 7 presidential elections.
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they are Herbert Humphrey Democrats......my parents were and most everyone else I knew growing up........
 
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