UNION CITY, N.J. — Beginning April 5, Socialist Workers Party campaigners will be fanning out from here across the state to introduce the party, its program, candidates and activities widely to working people, and to put Joanne Kuniansky for governor and Craig Honts for lieutenant governor, on the ballot.
“Our campaign couldn’t be more timely,” Kuniansky said when she and Honts spoke to the Militant March 30. “More workers are giving a hearing to a party that tells the truth about the deepening assaults on our jobs, living standards and working conditions, and that speaks out boldly in opposition to capitalist rule.”
The campaign will be an important vehicle for getting the SWP more widely known, to involve others in its activities and to find those interested in joining.
“The SWP is the only party that explains that the economic crises and wars shaking the world are an inevitable product of the workings of capitalism and the breakdown of the imperialist world order,” Kuniansky added. “That’s accelerated further since Moscow’s murderous invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’ Nazi-inspired pogrom against Jews in Israel.
“We say fundamental change is necessary and workers are capable of running society — from top to bottom — to meet the needs of toiling humanity and to put an end to the threat of new and more dangerous wars,” she said. “To do this, we need to build a party that can lead millions to take political power from the exploiting capitalist class into our own hands.”
“That sounds more and more needed and realistic to many workers today,” Honts added. “We explain that out of the upheavals created by the profit-driven workings of capitalism, the working class will have a chance to take political power, opening the door to humanity moving forward.”
Progress in that direction begins with the experiences workers acquire in the class struggle here and around the world.
Kuniansky pointed to the working people who’ve taken to the streets in Gaza in recent days, chanting “Out, out, out Hamas,” and the hundreds of thousands protesting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s assaults on political freedoms. “Our party starts with the world and points everywhere to workers’ common class interests,” she said.
“The confidence and combativity of working people in the U.S. has increased in the past few years too, as we use our unions to defend ourselves,” she said. In recent weeks Kuniansky and Honts have joined union rallies of flight attendants and postal workers fighting against the ravages of high prices and for better contracts and joined the picket line of Teamsters at 10 Roads Express.
They’ve built support for a New York conference demanding a halt to the U.S. rulers’ economic and political war against Cuba’s socialist revolution; joined an action in Teaneck, New Jersey, defending Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews; and in Passaic, a march to defend the rights of immigrant workers.
A class break with capitalist parties
“Democrats are attacking the billionaires that Trump puts in his administration, but they had no problem with the bankers, bosses and landlords who backed them when they were in the White House,” Honts said.
“Wherever we go, we meet workers who are disgusted with the Democrats and Republicans,” Kuniansky said. “And they’re interested to find out their choices are not limited to having to pick the ‘lesser evil’ of the bosses’ two main parties, and that a working-class alternative — the SWP — exists.”
“There can be no effective fight to defend workers’ living standards, nor prevent the U.S. rulers’ wars, unless it’s also directed against both their parties,” Honts said.
“Our campaign for ballot status will be an opportunity to explain why workers and our unions need to break from relying on the Democrats and Republicans. The SWP is the party that workers need today and our campaign shows what can be done to build it,” he said.
Throughout April, party campaigners will be collecting 3,200 signatures, well over the 2,000 required, to show the support that exists for the party being on the ballot.
As they have in many other states, Democrats in New Jersey moved to increase the obstacles facing the SWP — and third capitalist parties — in seeking to get on the ballot. Gov. Philip Murphy signed a bill more than doubling the petitioning requirements earlier this year, a brazen attempt to tighten the Democrats’ and Republicans’ political monopoly.
Undeterred, Socialist Workers Party campaigners are speaking broadly to workers across the state, on their doorsteps, in Walmart parking lots and elsewhere to get the signatures required. A rally launching the campaign will feature Kuniansky, Honts and Paul Mailhot, the SWP candidate for mayor of New York, in Union City April 5.
The SWP has been on the ballot for president and for statewide office in New Jersey since 1948. It’s always used the campaigns to advance a working-class road forward, to increase workers’ confidence in ourselves and fellow working people, and to show why the fight for workers to take power in the U.S. and advance the fight for a socialist world is both possible and necessary.
Join the SWP 2025 campaign! Introduce the party’s candidates to your family, friends, co-workers and neighbors, and join the party’s candidates as they talk to working people statewide. To help out, contact the SWP in New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia.