Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate campaigns in Newnan
By KRISTIAN HAMMOND
kristian@newnan.com
A candidate for president made a campaign stop in Newnan on Thursday.
James Harris, Social Workers Party candidate for president, visited with industrial plant employees and stopped briefly in downtown Newnan. Harris, a veteran trade unionist, is a longstanding member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party.
“I don’t consider myself a politician, but a member of the working class,” Harris said. “We want to offer an alterative to Democrats and Republicans to the working class so that the working people can gain some political power.”
Harris and Rachele Fruit, SWP candidate for the fourth congressional district, came to Newnan on Thursday in order to meet and talk with workers at the local Yamaha plant.
“We talk with the workers unions and those fighting for unions as well as to farmers to address the issues of the time and figure out what exactly is needed to make changes,” Harris said.
“No political change will come about without the mobilization of a working power. Political questions are given to the Republicans and the Democrats, but no solutions,” he added.
“The working class has to struggle for political power. Our goal is to give them that political power and offer permanent solutions to issues such as the rising unemployment that the Republicans and Democrats are simply not offering,” Harris stated.
“The impact of the crisis of the capitalist system is seen all over the world, not just the United States,” added Fruit. “We also want to work internationally with other countries such as India, where power outages and food shortages have been so bad that people have to compete over who gets power or food and — essentially — who gets to live or die.”
Fruit said the SWP has a goal “to help others through their crisis” — people outside the United States as well as Americans.
“The impact is seen everywhere, and more and more working class people are having to pay what the ruling parties say. We want to defend ourselves,” Fruit said.
“We’re only going to see more of it if something is not done,” she predicted.
“We want to prove that the working class can provide enough for everyone if providing is the goal rather than just making a profit,” Harris said. “Working class people need an alternative to the ruling parties. We need to chart our own independent course. We want to offer that alternative and work with the people to propose things such as a jobs program, unlike the other parties.”
Harris said he and the SWP “want to ignite a working class movement.”
Before coming to Newnan, Harris met with employees of a sugar plant in Red River Valley, N.D., who were having a picnic to observe the one-year anniversary of getting locked out of the plant. From Newnan he will be traveling to south Georgia to talk with farmers and the to Montreal Canada, as well as Philadelphia, and New York.
