Socialist Workers Party fields Iowa candidates

DES MOINES – Iowa's slate of Socialist Workers Party candidates want to win election in 2010, but they're more interested in launching a movement to empower workers.

“Working people in Iowa and around the country face a crisis of the capitalist system,” said David Rosenfeld, a 47-year-old tire factory worker in Des Moines who filed signed petition papers Thursday to be on the Nov. 2 general election ballot as a candidate for governor.

“We're under attack in terms of the cutbacks in social services, in terms of long-term unemployment, the permanent state of war in this country, and unless working people begin to organize themselves as a movement that can exercise power as opposed to relying on politicians that represent the dictatorship of capital – those are Democrats and Republicans – we're going to continue to get hammered in this crisis,” he said.

Unlike most political candidates, Helen Meyers, 65, an industrial worker and unionist from Des Moines who is running with Rosenfeld as his lieutenant governor, said SWP members are willing to take unambiguous stands on the issues.

“We are for full legalization of all immigrants now that are in this state and throughout the country. We stand four-square on the right for women to have an abortion. We think you can never have equality among women until women have a right to control their own bodies. We're for a unionized state. The social services need to be expanded, not closed up,” she said. “We're not just for a jobs program, we're for a public works programs.”

Rosenfeld said he wants to build a labor party based on a powerful union movement that would demand millions of jobs producing housing, schools and levees, as well as the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.

The gubernatorial hopeful conceded that his party won't have access to large amounts of campaign contributions or resources at its disposal to muster a double-digit voter share, but he believes the four Socialist Workers Party candidates seeking Iowa offices this year are carrying a message that working-class organizations are weak and need to fight for their rights is and will generate a growing response.

“We want to organize all workers into unions, but we want those unions to be fighting organizations, militant organizations that champion the rights of all workers. Workers need to unify as opposed to being pitted against each other” with issues such as illegal immigration, he said.

“We don't have any illusion that simply electing someone to office can solve these problems. We think a movement has to be built and our campaign is part of building such a movement in which working people can begin to fight in their own interests,” he added. “The problem we have right now is we're given a choice between two parties – the Democrats and the Republicans – that represent the dictatorship of capital. What we want to do is build a movement that can actually replace that dictatorship with the rule of the working class.”

That would mean a new set of priorities, said Margaret Trowe, 62, a Des Moines unionist who worked in the meatpacking, apparel and rubber industries and seeks to be Iowa's next agriculture secretary. For starters, she said Iowa's tax system should be converted to a “steeply graduated” income tax that taxes the wealthiest citizens but not working-class Iowans. She said the state should fully recognize the equal rights of gays and lesbians and end any efforts to amend the Constitution or pass laws that would prevent them from getting married.

Rosenfeld said his state budget plans would halt cutbacks in social services and improve average Iowans' living conditions.

“The priority would not be satisfying the interests of the bond holders and the billionaires,” he said. “The bond holders come last, the working people come first.”

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