SEP takes its socialist campaign to Kokomo, Indiana

Jerry White, the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for US vice president, led a campaign team to Kokomo, Indiana on Saturday to speak to workers and young people in the industrial city, located 65 miles north of Indianapolis.

In his discussions with autoworkers and other sections of workers, White explained that SEP presidential candidate Joe Kishore and he were advancing a program to mobilize the working class against both corporate-controlled pro-war parties and to fight for socialism. 

The city of 59,000 people was once a major manufacturing hub for General Motors, Chrysler and major auto suppliers. Along with nearby Muncie, Anderson and Marion, Kokomo was also a center of militant labor struggles in the early part of the last century, which led to the founding of the United Auto Workers and other industrial unions in the 1930s.

Indiana is also the home of Eugene Debs, the leader of the 1895 Pullman Strike, who won nearly 1 million votes running as a socialist candidate for US president in 1920, despite being imprisoned for opposing American imperialism’s entry into World War I. 

Kokomo has been hard hit by decades of deindustrialization, aided and abetted by the UAW bureaucracy. Howard County has some of the highest unemployment and poverty rates in the state, and one in five children in Kokomo are living below the official poverty line. With homeless shelters overflowing, the City Council is currently debating a ban on homeless encampments. 

Nearly 8,000 workers are employed at Stellantis (Chrysler) plants in the Kokomo area. Under the terms of last year’s labor agreement, hailed by UAW President Shawn Fain and President Biden as “historic,” the nearby Stellantis Tipton Transmission plant is being sold off and hundreds of temporary workers in the area have been fired. 

While in town, White met with two veteran Stellantis workers to discuss the conditions workers confront after the UAW’s betrayal of their contract fight and the need to build rank-and-file committees to transfer power from the UAW apparatus to the workers on the shop floor. He emphasized that the Biden administration was utilizing the UAW bureaucracy to impose the austerity and labor discipline needed to wage a war of global conquest. Both workers were deeply concerned about the dangers of war, including nuclear war with Russia and China. 

In opposition to the nationalism of the UAW bureaucracy, White said, workers needed to build the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA) to coordinate the resistance to job cuts and capitalist exploitation across national boundaries. This had to be combined with a conscious opposition to war, he said. “Workers internationally are being trampled, and that’s why we need to band together,” one worker replied. 

In his discussions with workers and youth outside a local retail center, White stressed that both Biden and Trump intended to make the working class pay for war, both in terms of lives and massive budget cuts in public education and other vital services.“Thousands of teachers are being laid off, schools are closing and cutting programs, bridges are collapsing because infrastructure is being starved of resources—but just last Saturday Biden signed a bipartisan spending bill that provides $825 billion for war.” 

“I don’t like them spending all this money for war,” a worker whose family moved from Texas to Indianapolis and then to Kokomo for more affordable housing, told White. “My husband is 72 years old, and he can’t afford to retire.” She said her daughter had applied for a job at a local Tyson meatpacking factory but had not gotten hired “because of all the immigrants.” 

White explained that it was the giant corporations, not immigrants, who were putting workers out of work. “Trump wants to divert the anger of workers away from the billionaires who are sucking up all of society’s wealth and using it for war, in order to divide the working class,” White said. 

Although the worker was clearly hard-pressed, she donated $5 to the SEP campaign when White appealed to her to support a party that was fighting to unite all workers against war, poverty and the capitalist system. 

“We’re all working so hard and it’s not right that we are spending money on a war that we don’t want to be in,” a young worker told White. She said Biden’s support for the Israeli genocide was “sick” and proved that he was not the president “we want, or that we need.” She was equally disdainful towards Trump and his effort to whip up hatred against immigrants, and said she was disgusted with “politics in general.” When White asked her what she thought about the Socialist Equality Party’s fight to build a mass party of the working class to fight for socialism and the control of society’s wealth by the working class, she said, “I agree 100 percent. That’s what we need to come together and work together, to be one, like we’re supposed to be.” 

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A young mother who works at a meatpacking plant was horrified by the wanton slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. “The deaths of mothers, children, just innocent people in general is wrong. … There are people in cities that could have been evacuated but instead they are just bombing and killing everybody.” She said there were enough people in the world to stop the genocide but “it’s like everybody is afraid to rise up.” 

White explained that the working class had the power to stop the wars, but they needed to build a powerful political movement against both pro-war parties and the corporate and financial oligarchy, which benefits from endless wars. She complained that funding for teachers and schools were being cut, and working people subjected to exorbitant taxes while the government spent almost a trillion dollars “for bombs and guns, and just slaughtering innocent people.”

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She described the dire conditions workers in Kokomo and across the country confront. “Factories for the working class are the only things that pay enough for you to survive because you’re not even living because the economy is going up so much. I get $19.75 an hour and that’s not enough, especially single mothers or families in general.” She said rents for two-bedroom houses that used to be $600 a month were now $850 to $1,000. Families go to the grocery store and spend $200-$300. “It’s outrageous what it costs to live and you’re not even living.”   

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She said people were “already fed up” with the endless wars and economic distress. White said the SEP was fighting to unite the working class against these conditions, and, at the same time prevent workers from “tricked into believing that the cause of our problems are immigrants,” like Trump claims. “Oh, my gosh, I hate that,” the worker said. Immigrants were coming here to take advantage of the same opportunities native born workers wanted, but “America makes it so hard on them. It’s not the immigrants” who are the problem, she said. 

White explained that Trump wanted to divert popular anger away from the billionaires and the massive war spending who were sucking up all of society’s wealth. “We’re socialists,” he said. “Whether you are a meatpacker, auto or Amazon worker, we create all the wealth. Instead of that wealth going to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, it must go back to the working class for schools, health care and other needs.” The worker thanked White for fighting against war and for the working class and said she would support the campaign. 

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Afterwards, White summed up the day of campaigning in Kokomo in a brief statement. 

We explained the connection between the war on the working class in the United States and the wars American imperialism is carrying out throughout the world, including the massive funding and supply of weapons to Israel for its genocide against the people in Gaza. Although Indiana is presented as a so-called “red state,” there was deep opposition to the war. We spoke to a young meatpacking worker making less than $20 an hour, trying to raise her children on a single income, who was outraged over inflation but most of all the squandering of nearly $1 trillion on war, including the murder of innocent women and children in Gaza.   

We also met with Stellantis workers looking to build rank-and-file committees independent of the UAW bureaucracy to fight the job cuts and we discussed with them the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees to unite workers throughout the world against the global assault on jobs. There was enormous support in Indiana, the birthplace of Eugene Debs, the great socialists who said to workers: “Get out of the Democratic and Republican parties—you don’t belong there.” Workers are disgusted with Trump and Biden and are looking for a political alternative and we won warm support for SEP presidential candidate Joseph Kishore and myself.