Alyson Kennedy

Neutral

The economic, social and moral crises of US and world capitalism undermine prospects for young people to begin families and provide for them. The birth rate has fallen to its lowest rate in 70 years. I support women's right to reproductive and maternal health care, access to safe and reliable birth control and safe and legal abortion procedures. I support decriminalization of abortions which is part of the broader battle for the rights of women and all working people.

Agree

Abortion is not the central issue facing women. Terminating a pregnancy should only be an option when all other things fail. The decline in affordable health care bears down on the working class, especially women who are the bearers of new life. Maternal mortality in the U.S. is at its highest level since 1965. I support government-funded universal medical care from cradle to grave that can only happen if the working class takes power and organizes society to meet human needs of the majority.

Disagree

It's an illusion to believe that lobbying the Democratic and Republican party politicians in the state legislature or Congress will fundamentally change the attacks on the unions and working people. They represent the wealthy capitalist class. I represent the Socialist Workers Party in the election. The perspective of the SWP is to explain the need for a powerful social revolution in the U.S., a movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority, a complete class break.

Disagree

Landlords have taken advantage of this housing crisis to raise rents on working people, which have increased by 47% over the past five years. And prices to buy a home have shot up by 26%. Under capitalist rule the availability of adequate housing, like just about everything else, is sharply class-divided. The fastest growing homeless are older adults. We are for a massive federal funded program, to build affordable comfortable housing for all who need it.

Agree

I oppose taxation of working people, who are weighed down by regressive payroll taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, cigarette and liquor taxes, homeowners’ taxes, as well as fees for driver’s licenses, schools, marriages, birth and death certificates. In the U.S. workers paid no income tax until 1943 when the Democratic administration of Franklin Roosevelt began an income tax. The U.S. rulers needed it to pay for their drive to dominate the world capitalist order during the slaughter of WWII.

Agree

Working people should be guaranteed rights against any discrimination by government.

Agree

The first amendment that guarantees freedom of worship has been under attack. Defending freedom of speech, assembly, religion, the right to bear arms and other constitutional rights from attack by the rulers and the FBI remains at the center of working-class politics today. These freedoms provide working people with protection from government interference in union and political activity.

Disagree

Declaring sanctuary cities is not a step towards defending immigrant workers. The SWP supports fighting for amnesty for immigrants who live and work in the U.S. The bosses pay immigrant labor cheap wages and use this to lower wages for all workers. We must build unity between native-born and immigrant workers and not let the bosses pit us against each other. Fighting for an amnesty will help strengthen the fight to unify the working class and build strong unions we can use to defend ourselves.

Working people today face a world of deepening capitalist disorder and escalating competition over profits, markets and political influence, as well as a deepening war drive gripping all the major rival world powers. Two watershed developments Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and the Tehran-backed Hamas pogrom killing over 1,200 Jews in Israel have sharply intensified this trend. The working class, in alliance with other exploited producers, is the one force capable of stopping another imperialist world war by taking power from the capitalist warmakers. It will take a party, organized like the Bolsheviks under V.I. Lenin during the 1917 Russian Revolution, to make that possible. This is the course being pursued by the Socialist Workers Party.

Choose not to answer

I oppose censorship to impose "woke" standards and "cancel culture". I support parents having the right to be involved in the education of their children including what kind of materials are in schools. Parents should have a say in their children’s education, which has less and less to do with learning to read, write, do mathematics and understand history and the physical world.

Disagree

People should vote in person wherever possible. Photo ID should be provided for anyone who needs it. The 1776 revolution won male suffrage. The Civil War ended slavery and extended the vote to the former slaves. More struggles won the vote for women in 1920. And the proletarian Black-led civil rights movement destroyed Jim Crow segregation and won the voting rights act. I support voting rights for ex-prisoners. Any restrictions on voting should be ended.

Neutral

Disagree

Bond issues are another way to tax working people.

Agree

I agree with science that there are two sexes male and female.

Disagree

DEI programs have been used to advance of middle-class layers who run them and deepen racial and class divisions. They are the opposite of the affirmative action programs set up in the 1970's that opened the door to the hiring of Black and women workers into jobs they had been excluded from. These gains were won out of the Black-led movement that overturned Jim Crow segregation.

Disagree

The green new energy, including electric cars and EV charging stations are based on making gigantic profits not finding real solutions to environmental pollution. Independent working-class political action and the conquest of power by workers and farmers will create the real basis for solving the destruction of the environment by the capitalist system and truly defending the earth's land, waters and atmosphere.

No.

No. But previous incarceration should not be used against anyone getting a job or having all of the rights of full citizenship including voting or running for office.

The purpose of government is to back the right of U.S. capitalists to exploit the labor of working people for profit and go to other countries to pillage and plunder for more profit. This kind of government will never defend the interests of working people. The increased rivalries and trade wars between the imperialist powers will lead to expanding wars, WWIII and nuclear devastation unless the working class takes power. That is what the Socialist Workers Party stands for and will help lead.

Neutral

None. I am a wage worker.

Choose not to answer

I have been a member of the Socialist Workers Party since 1975. I joined because I was looking for a party that had a revolutionary perspective for the U.S. and defended the 1959 Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro. I was impacted by the Black struggle that ended Jim Crow segregation and legalized lynching and the anti-Vietnam war movement. From this I saw the power of ordinary working people and the potential for the working class to lead a fundamental revolutionary change.

2014 General Election 2016 General Election 2018 General Election 2020 General Election 2022 General Election

I have voted for the candidates of the Socialist Workers Party who ran in these elections. The Socialist Workers Party has run presidential candidates in every election since 1948 and many state and local elections. The Socialist Workers Party is the only anti-war party.

Choose not to answer

I support the second amendment of the U.S. constitution.

Disagree

I am for the decriminalization of and not in favor of legalization.

Choose not to answer

1. Defending Israel's right to exist as a refuge for Jews and to defeat Hamas. I will support the fight against Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism. 2. Supporting the sovereignty of Ukraine and opposing Putin's invasion. Working people need their own foreign policy not the foreign policy of the U.S. rulers that the defends the interests of U.S. imperialism. 3. Fighting for amnesty for undocumented workers who live and work in the United States. This is a life and death question for organizing unions and building unity among working people.