Working class ready to resist
“Capitalism thrives on divisions among workers that hinder our ability to stand together and fight for higher wages and safer working conditions,” Mailhot said. “That’s why the Socialist Workers Party calls for amnesty for all immigrants living and working in the United States. That’s the only way to unite the working class to better be able to fight.”

“As the crisis of capitalism bears down harder on millions today, the working class shows it is ready to resist,” Mailhot said. He pointed to the Air Canada flight attendants, who defied a government order to return to work. Their powerful strike action convinced the union leadership to not give in, saying they’d go to jail if they had to. Now workers have a better understanding of their power, Mailhot said.

The contract the union leadership agreed to is far short of what workers were fighting for and felt their struggle was capable of achieving, Mailhot said. That was made clear by workers’ 99% rejection of the wage raise, the only part of the contract the workers got to vote on. Many Air Canada flight attendants say they have a new found appreciation of themselves and their ability to fight, and millions of other workers took notice. “That is the victory of this important struggle,” Mailhot said.

Mailhot pointed to many Labor Day activities this year that reflected the importance of the fight to unify the working class through support for the rights of immigrant workers. The SWP participated in these events across the country, raising a working-class road forward. The party explains why workers need to break from the parties of the bosses — Democrats, Republicans and any others — and fight for the working class to take political power.

Many workers welcomed this discussion, as they talked about their own battles over wages and working conditions at the companies where they work.

One participant asked what the SWP hopes to accomplish through its election campaigns.

“The Socialist Workers Party uses the increased interest of workers in politics during the elections to point to the examples already set by the working class throughout its history,” Mailhot explained. “We especially point to the two great revolutions of our epoch, in Russia in 1917 and in Cuba in 1959, when the working class took power, and used the power of the state not to defend an exploiting class, but to defend the toilers who have absolutely no material interest in exploiting and oppressing others.

We ask workers to join the SWP, he said, and to help fight for workers power, unleashing the tremendous capacities of working people to solve every question, to put an end to discrimination and national oppression, to eliminate the source of war, and eliminate the massive buildup of the means of destruction underway today.

The SWP is the party of today’s working-class struggles and the future of humanity.