The Socialist Workers Party candidates Joanne Kuniansky (pictured, above) for House of Representatives in the 8th CD and Lea Sherman (pictured, below) in the 9th CD filed petitions to get on the ballot on Tuesday, May 24, at the Department of Elections in Trenton. Each has petitions with more than 150 signatures, triple the number required for ballot status.

After filing, Sherman visited the picket line of striking nurses and techs, members of JNESO, at St. Michaels Medical Center in Newark to show support for their fight for wages and better staff and patient ratios. “Solidarity from workers and our unions is crucial to the outcome of this struggle,” she
said.

The SWP candidates call for defense of Ukraine’s independence, Moscow out of Ukraine and an end to U.S. sanctions on Russia. “Sanctions, no matter who they target, hit working people in Russia the hardest,” said Kuniansky. “We’re for solidarity between working people in Russia and Ukraine, who
share the same interests in defeating the Putin regime’s invasion.”

“Working people must see the necessity of taking political power in our own hands here in the U.S. and around the world — as the toilers did in Cuba in the 1960s following a popular, workers and farmers-based revolution, a socialist revolution — or we will face a future of social devastation, fascism,
world war, and even nuclear devastation,” Kuniansky said.

“We must break from the two parties of the US ruling class, the Democrats and Republican, and build our own party, a labor party, that can advance our own foreign policy, based on the common interests we share with workers worldwide,” she said.

“Working people must combat all forms of Jew-hatred wherever it raises its head,” said Kuniansky. “We stand for the unconditional recognition of Israel as a refuge for Jews, who are scapegoated for the miseries caused by capitalism.”

The SWP candidates say the labor movement should lead workers to fight for thirty hours work for forty hours pay, to spread the work that is available around and for cost-of-living adjustments in every contract and all benefits so when prices rise, workers’ wages go up automatically. The crisis of the profit
system is making it harder to start a family and hold one together. The struggle in front of working people includes fighting for accessible and affordable health care, childcare, family planning including adoption, as well as access to contraception and safe and secure abortion when needed.

“All these questions are class questions,” said Sherman. “The road forward is to organize a working-class battle to defend our livelihoods, our families and control over the conditions where we work and live.”

Both candidates are factory workers and members of the BCTGM union.