Joanne Kuniansky

Where Kuniansky stands

What is your stance on access to abortion and other reproductive healthcare? And what roles should the federal government and the states each play on reproductive healthcare?

The Socialist Workers Party unconditionally supports the decriminalization of abortion and joins others in fighting for it. Our position flows from our support for the emancipation of women, from all forms of oppression. This is a part of a broader fight for women's right to reproductive and maternal healthcare, sex education (not gender indoctrination), and access to the safest and most reliable contraceptive methods, as well as safe and legal abortion. There can be no road to women’s emancipation or Black liberation separate and apart from a working-class struggle to confront capitalism’s social crisis. Today the fight for affordable family formation that includes living-wage jobs with regular hours and safe work conditions is key. Only with social and economic security can a woman freely decide when and if to have a child.

What is your position on immigration reform? What do you think the relationship between federal immigration enforcement and state or local government institutions should be?

The Democrats and Republicans seek to divide working people, by blaming immigrants for the problems caused by the workings of capitalism. A union-led fight for amnesty for all workers in the US without papers is needed to unify the working class. The SWP opposes raids, deportations and brutal treatment of immigrant workers at the hands of ICE agents. Winning an amnesty would end, for good, their second-class status. SWP members have joined actions at Delaney Hall, Newark, to protest the treatment of immigrants held there. We’ve joined fights by families against attempts to have their loved ones deported. We will continue joining these struggles—which are in the interests of all workers—after the election. Neither federal nor state governments have any right to trample on the constitutional protections of any person in the US, whether they have papers or not. That includes protection from unreasonable search and seizure by ICE.

What changes would you support to make healthcare and mental health services more affordable, accessible, and easier to navigate?

Under capitalism health care is organized to maximize profits, not to provide people with the care they need. The Cuban Revolution shows how health care can be universal—but only because millions of workers and peasants took power transforming social relations and themselves. We back the strikes by thousands of nurses and health care workers in the US who are fighting for more hiring so patients get properly treated. The hospital bosses have increased the work load on nurses putting patients’ lives at risk. Striking nurses have shown the kind of militant struggle that is needed. You will find SWP candidates on their picket lines building solidarity with these fights. Advances for the working class don't come from begging capitalist politicians to make changes. They come through struggles by working people and our unions, and by organizing —independently of the bosses and their twin parties, the Democrats and Republicans.

What actions would you support to strengthen climate resilience and protect infrastructure and neighborhoods from the impact of extreme weather?

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What measures do you support to expand voter access and restore trust in our elections?

The 1965 Voting Rights Act barred measures preventing Blacks from voting. It was a product of the massive Black-led working-class movement that destroyed racial segregation. Despite liberal hysteria, that conquest has not been reversed. The bosses’ parties, the Democrats and Republicans, are determined to maintain their political monopoly and keep working people trapped in a set-up where the only choice is which one of them is the lesser evil. They raise petitioning requirements to try to keep working-class parties like the SWP off the ballot, while their media severely restricts coverage of the SWP. Over 4 million former felons cannot vote. The fight to restore their right to vote is important for the entire working class. Workers can never trust parties that defend the bosses’ exploitation of our labor and promote their wars abroad. We need a party of our own, but we don’t have to start from scratch. The SWP exists, forged over decades in the class struggle. Help us to build it!