Also available: Position Paper: Hands Off Iraq!

Socialist Workers Party Campaign Brochure

Marea Himelgrin for U.S. Senate

Jon Hillson for Governor

Leah Finger for Lt. Governor

Damon Tinnon for Secretary of State (write-in)

The political situation facing working people today is marked by two important developments - Washington's escalating provocation and military threats against Cuba and Haiti and the wave of strikes against the employers 15-year offensive to increase profit rates by driving down wages and working conditions.

Washington's occupation of Haiti will not aid Haiti's working people. It could easily lead to a bloodbath as in Panama. Occupation by U.S. troops will be used to beat back working class, peasant and student resistance as they attempt to stabilize a capitalist regime that is subservient to Washington. Beginning in early August the U.S. government, exploiting the issue of immigration as it has done many times before, has set up an explosive situation on Cuban soil by forcibly transporting thousands of Cuban exiles to its naval station in Guantanamo.

Incidents there can be used as a pretext for military intervention against Cuba. The Clinton administration has tightened the economic embargo and travel barriers against Cuba and is beefing up its military presence around Cuba. War moves against Haiti deepen the danger to Cuba's revolutionary government.

Nine U.S. administrations--Democratic and Republican-- have been attempting to crush Cuba's revolutionary government for 35 years, because it is a government loyal to and backed by the big majority of Cubas working people--not capitalist profiteers. It is a beacon of resistance to U.S. big business domination to workers and peasants throughout the Americas.

The Socialist Workers' candidates are participating in protest actions against U.S. war moves. They call for:

• U.S. Out of Haiti!
• U.S. Out of Guantanamo!
• Open the U.S. Borders to Cuban and Haitian Refugees!
• End the Trade Embargo of Cuba!
• Lift the Ban on Travel to Cuba!
• Repeal the Ban on Charter Flights and Sending Money to Cuban Citizens!

In recent months workers have increasingly stopped work and begun walking picket lines in a broad range of industries from coast to coast. Workers at Caterpillar, Allegheny-Ludlum Steel, Canadian Pacific(Soo Line) railroad, and over-the-road truckers, along with many other unionists have joined this strike wave. They are resisting the bosses' drive to improve their edge against big business competitors at home and abroad by imposing cuts in wages and benefits while enforcing longer hours and more hazardous working conditions.

With the recent increase in hiring by many employers, younger new workers are joining older unionists in these fights. Experience is being gained to help prepare for even bigger battles to come. These lessons can lay the basis for turning the unions into more effective fighting instruments where solidarity with other workers becomes second nature and membership control and political independence are the norm.

We need a program of action to unite working-class fighters at home and abroad to struggle for our interests and move forward. We demand:

• Reduce the work week to 30 hours with no loss in pay to spread the available work;
• Establish cost-of-living adjustments in wages, pensions, Social Security payments, and unemployment and welfare benefits;
• Raise the minimum wage to union scale;
• Expand Social Security benefits to include full medical and dental care for all;
• Establish and enforce affirmative action quotas in hiring and upgrading for oppressed national minorities and women to unite all working people against discrimination.

Working people are hammered from all sides by demagogic attempts to pit us against each other on the basis of sex, race, country of origin, religion, and age. This drive, backed by both Democrats and Republicans, is spearheaded by ultra-rightists and fascists like Patrick Buchanan and Oliver North. They use scapegoating to blame Jews, the unemployed, immigrants, welfare mothers, gays, and others as the cause for the social and economic difficulties we face.

We must counter this poisonous, divisive, and reactionary cultural war with working-class solidarity. We must demand:

• The right of women to choose whether or not to have children by providing free, safe contraceptives and abortion on demand for all women who want them.
• Federal troop protection of abortion clinics;
• Provide 24-hour child-care facilities;
• End police brutality! Prosecute and jail cops who brutalize and murder!
• No to the death penalty, which is a weapon used against working people!

Workers can win important allies in the countryside by extending solidarity to debt-burdened working farmers and by supporting:

• Moratorium on farm foreclosures;
• Government-financed disaster insurance;
• Low-interest credit;
• Guaranteed market for commodities with income sufficient to meet costs of production and make enough to live on.

By mobilizing around demands to defend our interests, working people will gain greater self-confidence in collective action. We will learn that it is only by getting rid of the big business rulers in this country and establishing our own government of workers and working farmers that we can head toward socialism and be able to end the anarchy, violence, and inhumanity of capitalism.

Marea Himelgrin for U.S. Senate Jon Hillson for Governor Leah Finger for Lt. Governor

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Prepared by the MN Socialist Workers '94 Campaign