Osborne Hart and John Staggs, the Socialist Workers Party candidates for mayor and City Council in Philadelphia, are on the ballot, campaign director Chris Hoeppner announced Aug. 10.
“The SWP campaign is the only campaign in the U.S. that represents the interests of working people and presents a revolutionary perspective,” Staggs told the Militant. “The response our municipal campaign has received shows the potential for the SWP presidential campaign.”
Fifteen months before the 2016 elections, the campaign of the capitalist parties is heating up, with 17 Republicans vying for the nomination, front-running Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign sputtering and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, running second in the polls for the Democratic nomination and drawing big crowds.
While knocking on doors in working-class neighborhoods with petitions to get on the ballot and at labor rallies and social actions, “SWP campaigners talk about the need for a labor party based on the unions,” Staggs said. “We need to break from the Democrats, the Republicans and the ‘independents’ who propose Band-Aids to patch up the capitalist system.”
Staggs and Hart are workers at Walmart who are involved in the fight for $15 an hour, a union and full-time hours at the retail giant.