Socialist Workers Party 2016 Candidates Alyson Kennedy for U.S. president ■ Osborne Hart for vice president! Alyson Kennedy Alyson Kennedy grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Indianapolis. She was attracted to political action in high school as she watched TV coverage of workers and youth who were Black battling racist cops and KKK thugs across the south and overturning Jim Crow segregation. She moved to Kentucky, where she was part of the fight to desegregate Louisville public schools in 1975. A socialist and trade union fighter for more than four decades, Kennedy, 65, is a member of the Alyson Kennedy for president Osborne Hart for vice-president Socialist Workers Party’s National Committee. She was the SWP won widespread solidarity and set a Osborne Hart candidate for vice president in powerful example of how to fight. Osborne Hart, whose father was 2008 and for U.S. Senate from In 2014 Kennedy went to Turkey a career soldier, spent his youth Illinois in 2010. to meet with coal miners there travelling around the world with She has worked in coal mines in and help them get out the truth his family. Since getting involved Alabama, Colorado, Utah and in the U.S. and elsewhere about with the civil rights movement in West Virginia. She joined the their fight against deadly working the 1960s, Hart has been a lifelong United Mine Workers in 1981. conditions imposed by the owners fighter for Black rights. He’s Kennedy was part of the first with government complicity. A joined struggles against police wave of women who worked as mine explosion in the town of Soma brutality and school segregation underground coal miners, helping had killed more than 300 miners. and the movement to bring down to break down the division of labor She also met with a representative apartheid in South Africa and free by sex and strengthen working- of the Kurdish-based People’s Nelson Mandela. class solidarity. She became part Democratic Party, bringing solidarity He was politically active in of the Coal Employment Project, a to the Kurds’ fight against national the 1970s in the fight to end group that championed women’s oppression across Turkey, as well as Washington’s war against the fights to get hired in the mines in Syria, Iraq and Iran. peoples of Vietnam and Indochina. and fight harassment on the job. Kennedy has also worked in plants Hart joined the Socialist Workers From 2003 to 2006 Kennedy was and mills organized by the United Party in the mid-1970s and for Steelworkers, UNITE HERE as a among those in the front ranks of a Continued... union-organizing battle at the Co- garment worker, and other unions. Op coal mine outside Huntington, She has been active for decades Read Utah. The miners there, mostly in the fight to defend a woman’s immigrants from Mexico, fought for right to choose abortion and has UMWA representation to win safe helped defend clinics from rightist working conditions, an end to abuse attempts to shut them down. A socialist newsweekly by the bosses and improved wages, published in the interests which started at $5 an hour. They Continued... of working people Alyson Kennedy Continued confessions by Chicago cops. participated in protests against cuts in Medicare, demanding free, She traveled to Kanab, Utah to Kennedy marched with members government-funded medical care join protests by ranchers there of the Chicago Teachers Union on for all; against police brutality and against government restrictions strike against a bitter assault by city in solidarity with workers fighting and to solidarize against the cop officials in 2012, walked picket lines concession demands by steel killing of Leroy Finicum who was with United Steelworkers locked out giant ArcelorMittal. He explains buried there after being shot by Honeywell Corp. in Metropolis, the Democrats and Republicans dead by Oregon State Police for Illinois, in 2010 and again in 2014, are the parties of the bosses and participating in ranchers’ protests as well as with United Auto Workers bankers and his party, the Socialist in eastern Oregon. members on strike last year against Workers Party, is of and for the Kohler Inc. in Wisconsin. She joined working class. protests in Kentucky, West Virginia OSBORNE HART Continued and St. Louis by union coal miners decades has been part of helping Over the past five years, Hart fighting attempts by Patriot Coal to build and strengthen the labor has joined in building protests bosses to use bankruptcy to tear up movement. He’s lived in Atlanta, in Philadelphia against the drive union contracts. San Francisco, New York, Detroit by state and city governments to and now Philadelphia and has slash funds for public education, She has been active in the fight worked in industry, including as a with massive layoffs and spiraling against Washington’s wars, meat packer, loading trucks in a class sizes. These moves have from protests against the war in TJX warehouse, at Walmart and on been accompanied by assaults Vietnam to speaking out against the railroad. on teachers’ and other school the bloody aggression in Iraq and workers’ wages, pensions, health Afghanistan. He joined in defense of United care and their unions. Steelworkers-organized oil refinery She’s been a stalwart in workers forced on strike in 2015, Hart is active in the fight demonstrations against the cop demanding workers control over against government attacks killings of Laquan McDonald, Rekia safety to counter bosses’ speed- and discriminatory laws against Boyd, Quintonio LeGrier, Bettie up drives, job cuts and attacks on undocumented workers, protests Jones and many others, as well unions. against deportations and backed as actions over years demanding efforts to organize the unorganized the release from prison of men Hart, 63, ran for mayor of wherever they are from. tortured into making false Philadelphia in 2015. He He’s spoken out in defense of the Cuban Revolution, demanding Join the Socialist Workers Party campaign in 2016! Washington end its 55-year-long economic embargo of the island The Socialist Workers Party is your party and return the territory containing Don’t organize around who you’re against, fight for what you’re for! the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo ❑❑ I want to get involved! Contact me so I can join in campaigning for the working- class alternative, Socialist Workers Party candidates Alyson Kennedy for to Cuba. He points to the Cuban president and Osborne Hart for vice president. Revolution, how workers and ❑❑ Enclosed is my contribution of $______. farmers there transformed them- (Please make checks out to Socialist Workers National Campaign Committee) selves and their county, and their ❑❑ I would like a 12-week subscription to the Militant newspaper. selfless internationalism, are ($5 enclosed, checks payable to the Militant.) an example and inspiration to Name:______workers worldwide. Address:______City:______State:______Zip:______He calls for the immediate release of Oscar López, a fighter Phone: ______Email:______for Puerto Rican independence Union/Organization/School:______framed up and jailed in the U.S. — Socialist Workers Party 2016 Campaign much of it in solitary confinement 227 West 29th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10001 — for more than 34 years. 646-922-8186 | [email protected]