Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor visits Albany

ALBANY — Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Georgia Rachele Fruit stopped by The Albany Herald this week to discuss her party’s position on the country’s political climate.

Fruit was nominated in the spring by the Atlanta branch of the Socialist Workers Party to run for office. Although not on the official ballot, she runs on the unification platform of her party reaching a hand out to the American working class to offer an option away from the Democratic and Republican parties.

“The main idea is that the problems that the working class faces — and working farmers — are the result of the decay of the capitalist system that we live under, and that only by uniting and building a working class movement in struggle can we fight to change the conditions that we face and that working people have no political voice,” she said. “We need to break with both parties. They’re both the parties of our bosses.”

Fruit and her campaign manager, Susan Lamont, are members of the working class, employed by Walmart. Fruit was joined during her stop in Albany by local supporters, including Willie Head, a farmer from Pavo.

Fruit spoke about the need for higher wages for the working class, especially for those who work multiple jobs to pay their bills, including teachers and hotel workers. She also spoke about the need for health care — not health insurance, but health care for all.

“There’s no reason in this society, in this world today, that every human being — as a human right — doesn’t have health care from the time they’re born to the time they die,” she said. “Under our society, education, health care, things that should be basic human rights, are commodities. They’re bought and sold. If you have money to buy, you can. If you don’t have money to buy, too bad for you.

“It doesn’t matter what color you are or what language you speak, if you get sick you need a doctor. We’re all human beings; we have the same needs. How you get from here to there is collective action. It requires workers on the job to come together to organize a union.”

Asked how she as governor would change the current health care system in Georgia to benefit the working class, Fruit said, “One individual can’t change anything. What we’re saying is it’s going to take all of us in a united movement. We say that the working class has never been more united in the history of the United States when the county was founded on slavery and then the fight to overthrow slavery and the fight to overthrow Jim Crow.”

Fruit said that the narrative promoted by politicians, especially liberals, is that the working class is more racist today and that there is a rising rightist movement. She said that the Socialist Workers Party disagrees with that notion. Fruit said that the party stands for amnesty for every worker in the United States with union inclusion for all workers, regardless of where the workers are born and no deportations or threat of deportation for members of the working class.

In general, Fruit said that her platform, based on the values of the Socialist Workers Party, is about creating a unified party for members of the working class to have a voice in politics free from the divisive forces within the country and the world.

For more information about Rachele Fruit, contact her campaign headquarters at [email protected] or call (678) 528-7828.

Gypsy Crow