Malcolm Maynard Jarrett, May 9, 1970 (Missouri) -
VP candidate for Socialist Workers Party (2020)
Running mate with nominee: Alyson Kennedy (b. 1950)
Popular vote: 6,805 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
The Socialist Workers Party nominated Alyson Kennedy for President for a second time. Her running-mate for 2020 was Malcolm Jarrett, who had been a SWP candidate for Pittsburgh City Council the year before.
Jarrett's biography was provided online by The Militant--
Malcolm Jarrett
Malcolm Jarrett, Socialist Workers Party candidate for vice president, 49, works as a cook at a catering company in Pittsburgh. He was attracted to working-class struggle as an African American youth in eastern Missouri, as his family joined in the defense of the Black community in Cairo, Illinois, from assaults by cops and vigilantes. In these struggles, he gained a real appreciation of the support from farmers in the area. Jarrett was also influenced by the popular revolutionary movement that overthrew the apartheid regime in South Africa.
He joined the SWP while organizing protests at Southeast Missouri State University to oppose Washington’s war against Iraq in 1991. Today he stands in solidarity with protests by workers and youth against wars promoted by both Washington and Tehran in Iran and Iraq.
Jarrett has built solidarity with union battles, including the wave of strikes and protests by teachers and school workers in 2018, traveling to join actions in their support in West Virginia, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
During last year’s strike by United Auto Workers members at GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, Jarrett joined picket lines in Indiana, Texas and Minnesota. On a national speaking tour last fall he and Alyson Kennedy brought solidarity to coal miners fighting to get back pay stolen from them by coal bosses at the Blackjewel mine in Kentucky. The two met Uber and Lyft taxi drivers in Atlanta to discuss the exploitation they face and the need to fight for one union for all app-based, limousine and yellow cab drivers.
Jarrett has participated in fights against cop brutality and murders from the 1997 killing of Jonny Gammage to the actions of thousands of young people who marched in Pittsburgh last spring to protest the acquittal of the cop who murdered Antwon Rose II. He points out that police violence and capitalist “justice” is aimed at intimidating and punishing working people.
On Oct. 27, 2018, when an anti-Semitic killer shot down 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Jarrett joined 3,000 people protesting that night. He explains that Jew-hatred is endemic to capitalism and how the ruling boss class turns to anti-Semitic thug forces in times of deep crisis to divide and crush the working class. Working people have to be educated in what this question is all about.
Jarrett has traveled to Cuba on a number of occasions, including as part of last year’s International May Day Brigade, to offer solidarity with the Cuban peoples’ six-decade-long fight against the U.S. embargo and to be able to speak out more effectively in defense of the socialist revolution. He is now on his way to participate in the 2020 International Havana Book Fair — a major cultural and political event in Cuba, and urges others to join this year’s May Day Brigade.
Jarrett was the SWP candidate for Pittsburgh City Council last year, speaking out at a public hearing attended by 200 residents of Allegheny County against U.S. Steel’s willful pollution in the area and to call for workers control of production. Jarrett says health care in the U.S. is a disaster caused by the for-profit capitalist system. The SWP fights for universal, government-guaranteed cradle-to-grave health care, and retirement income for all.
The 2020 SWP platform was consistent with their past stance on the issues. It was interesting that mention of the COVID-19 virus was absent--
THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY PRESENTS A FIGHTING WORKING-CLASS PROGRAM. WE NEED TO ORGANIZE TO FIGHT GROWING EMPLOYER ATTACKS ON OUR JOBS, WAGES AND WORKING CONDITIONS. Build solidarity with workers’ struggles to organize and defend themselves. On this course, we can build and use union power on our own behalf, and for all those suffering blows by the bosses and their government. One union for all drivers — taxi, Uber, Lyft and other app-based and car service drivers!
MILLIONS NEED JOBS TODAY! Our unions need to fight for a federal government-financed public works program to put millions to work at union-scale wages building hospitals, schools, housing, mass transportation and much more that workers need. Fight for a sliding scale of hours and wages to stop layoffs and the effects of runaway prices. Cut the workweek with no cut in pay! For cost-of-living clauses in every contract that raise pay and retirement benefits to offset every rise in prices!
Demand immediate national government unemployment benefits at union scale for all those thrown out of work as long as they need it.
WORKERS NEED THEIR OWN PARTY, A LABOR PARTY. For our unions to lead a class break from the parties of the bosses, the Democrats and Republicans. A labor party can organize workers in our millions to fight in our own interest and in the interests of all those exploited and oppressed by capital. It can chart a course to take political power out of the hands of the capitalist rulers and establish a workers and farmers government.
WORKERS CONTROL OF PRODUCTION. Workers need to fight to wrest control of production out of the hands of the bosses. Employers care about profits, not the dangerous conditions we’re forced to work under. This is the only road to take control of and enforce safety and health on the job. Demand the bosses open their books for inspection by workers and consumers. Workers control of production is a school for learning to run the economy ourselves, in the interests of all producers, a crucial step alongside building a labor party to fight to take political power.
FARMERS — WORKERS’ ALLIES ON THE LAND. Fight for immediate government relief to fully cover farmers’ production costs, including living expenses for themselves and their families.
No more foreclosures! Nationalize the land, guaranteeing its use by those who live on and till it, not “repo” seizures by absentee bankers, landowners, or capitalist farmers.
AMNESTY FOR ALL UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS in the US, a life-and-death question for the unions to unite workers and cut across divisions the bosses use to drive down wages. For access to driver’s licenses for all.
OPPOSE WASHINGTON’S WARS. US hands off Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. US troops out of Afghanistan, Korea, the Middle East. End US colonial rule in Puerto Rico.
FOR RECOGNITION OF ISRAEL AND OF A CONTIGUOUS PALESTINIAN STATE. The leaders of Arab states, of Israel and Palestinian leaders need to meet and recognize both the state of Israel and an independent Palestinian state. For the right of Jews to return to Israel as a refuge in the face of capitalist crisis, Jew-hatred and murderous violence.
CUBA’S REVOLUTION — AN EXAMPLE. The Cuban Revolution in 1959 showed it is possible for workers and farmers to transform themselves in struggle, to take political power and uproot capitalist exploitation. End the US rulers’ economic war against Cuba; US out of Guantánamo.
FIGHT POLICE BRUTALITY! Demand that cops who kill and brutalize people be prosecuted. Fight racist discrimination and the entire capitalist injustice system, with its frame-ups, “plea bargains,” onerous bail and “three strike” prison sentences, all of which disproportionately hit workers who are Black. For the right to vote for ex-prisoners and all workers behind bars.
HEALTH CARE FOR ALL. Fight for universal, government-guaranteed cradle-to-grave health care, and retirement income for all.
WOMEN’S RIGHT TO ABORTION. Defend women’s right to unrestricted access to family planning services, including the right to safe, secure abortions.
DEFEND POLITICAL RIGHTS. Defend the right to vote, to free speech and assembly and to bear arms, under attack from Democrats and Republicans alike. Defend freedom of worship. Stop FBI and other government spying, harassment and disruption. No to reactionary “cancel culture” and efforts to shut up people by public lynching through social media.
DEFEND RIGHTS OF PRISONERS. End solitary confinement. End suppression of the Militant, books and other newspapers by prison authorities. Abolish the death penalty, an anti-working-class weapon in the hands of the rulers.
One of America's more enduring third parties, the SWP had dropped to the third tier and was now competing with and in some cases eclipsed by other parties and activists on the Left that had originally splintered or were purged from/by them. Some critics charged the SWP with being a cult sitting on the shelf beyond their expiration date.
The Kennedy/Jarrett ticket finished 12th place nationally, earning roughly only half the number of votes they won in 2016. They were on the ballot in 6 states: Tennessee 0.08%, Washington 0.06%, Vermont 0.05%, Louisiana and Minnesota 0.02% each, and Colorado 0.01%.
Election history:
2019 - Pittsburgh City County (Penn.) (Socialist Workers) - defeated
Other occupations: cook
Notes:
Washington State trivia alert!!! Kennedy personally came to Olympia to be on hand when the petition to place her name on the ballot with Jarrett was submitted to the Washington Secretary of State.
