“I wouldn’t have voted for any of the Democrats or Republicans because their politics don’t sit well with me—the whole lot of them,” says 19-year-old Gordon Barnes. A sophomore at Temple University double-majoring in history and political science, Barnes didn’t vote in his home state of New Jersey earlier this month, not because he doesn’t care about politics—he does, passionately, in fact—but partly because there wasn’t a candidate he was passionate about on the ballot.

“There’s no will to break away from the two-party system—that’s the main problem,” says Barnes. “People are so engrained in the status quo, they’d rather keep it that way and not even consider the options.”

That perceived complacency among American voters is one reason why, when Barnes heard Róger Calero—presidential candidate for the Socialist  Workers Party—was coming to Philadelphia this week, he approached his university about having Calero come speak to students on campus.

“The purpose was twofold,” Barnes explains. “One was just to expose students to an alternative political view, a different perspective. The second part was to get students coming to the [Socialist Workers Party] forums, reading literature and just interested in the party’s politics.”

Barnes is part of a very small political group on Temple’s campus made up of students who support the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a communist political party with a history dating back to 1938.  In this country, the party is now most associated with representing and protecting the rights of laborers and immigrants, and has spoken out strongly against U.S. intervention in foreign countries, including Iraq. The party also operates Pathfinder Press, which publishes texts by party leaders and revolutionaries like Malcolm X, Leon Trotsky and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, as well as the weekly socialist newspaper The Militant.

Gordon Barnes (left) and Róger Calero talk to students at Temple on Tuesday.

Barnes says he’s been trying to get Temple to agree to host speakers affiliated with the SWP for quite a while, but it’s been difficult because of the stigma associated with the party.

“Most people in America, they associate the far left with Stalinist Russia, which it isn’t. So they immediately think violence, repression and all of that,” Barnes explains. “Temple is generally a liberal school, but not that liberal in the sense of revolutionary politics.”

Despite some resistance, Barnes was able to bring Calero in to speak, and on Monday the Nicaragua-born candidate met with a group of students to talk about some of the basic platforms of his party.

“Every four years they present it as if you have a choice, but at the same time, they block the part of working-class candidates, like myself, to make it seem like you don’t have anything to choose from,” Calero says of our current democratic process. We spoke over the phone before Calero left Philly for a campaign trip through Georgia. “We’ve been telling people, ‘You don’t have to choose between the candidates of the rich. There’s a working-class voice you can choose.’”

Calero and his party are attempting mobilize workers’ unions around the country to form their own labor party. His efforts are particularly salient in Pennsylvania, a state that boasts a large working-class population, consisting particularly of miners and other rural laborers hard-hit by the current economic downturn.

“Unions can fight for a lot, but workers need our own party to fight in the political arena, because there are limitations on what unions can do,” Calero says.

As to why he feels workers are not being adequately represented in Washington, Calero sites this example:

“If we would have had representatives of the working class in Congress right now when this economic stimulus package was going on, we would’ve made a different set of proposals on how to confront the consequences of the economic crisis. Neither party proposed an increase in the minimum wage. People can’t live on the $5.75 minimum wage is at right now.”

On his first day in Pennsylvania, Calero met with garment workers in Norristown to discuss the conditions they face. He also met with a group of meatpackers at a plant in Allentown.

“Their bosses are pressing for more and more production every day,” says Calero. “They’re looking for how to fight collectively.”

Because Calero was not born in the United States, he cannot officially hold the office of the presidency, and hasn’t even made it onto the ballot in most states (in 2004, he made it onto 14). Though he will appear on the presidential ballot in Delaware in November, it’s unlikely he’ll make it on here in Pennsylvania due to this state’s extremely restrictive ballot-access laws. (See my previous post on this topic here.)

Instead, Calero’s visit to Philadelphia was more about spreading his message and what he calls “joining the struggles” of the working class.

“We offer something different to young people who are attracted to our campaign … to be part of the different struggles going on around the country,” Calero says. “So they can have a chance to learn and witness firsthand the only social force that can change things—the working class. That’s what we did at Temple; that’s what we’re doing everywhere. The opportunity for young people to link up with real social struggle, with real politics by the million in the streets.”

And not everyone who attended the Temple event was a leftist. Barnes says several of the 18 other students who attended were conservatives.

“We realize Róger’s not going to win,” says Barnes, who most likely will be out of the country for the general election on a research trip to Burkina Faso. “There’s really no realistic chance for any other political party to gain any kind of foothold in American politics at this time.”

Gordon Barnes in Tamil Nadu, India, in December.

Still, like Calero, he’s determined to continue expanding this country’s political dialogue, particularly among young people. He’s already in the process of organizing a discussion for Temple students about the Socialist Workers Party-published book Our History is Still Being Written.

Barnes says support for the SWP in Philadelphia numbers in the thousands.

-cjh