Jerome "Jerry" White (born 1959) is an American politician and journalist, and is the Labor Editor reporting for the World Socialist Web Site. He is a member of the Socialist Equality Party of the United States, and was a member of its predecessor the Workers League, joining the movement in 1979.[1] White was the SEP's nominee for the United States presidential elections four times, running in 1996, 2008, 2012 and 2016.[2][3]
In February 2024, SEP National Chairman David North announced White would run in the 2024 US election as the party's candidate for Vice President of the United States. His running mate on the ticket is Joseph Kishore.[4]
White's political program calls for the expropriation and nationalization of all major banks and corporations, the end to all US wars abroad, including the Israeli war with the Palestinians and the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine, a new democratic system of worker control over companies, and the establishment of social rights of the working class.
White's call for social rights include the right to: a livable income, a safe working environment, clean water and air, food, safe and affordable housing, high quality education, transportation, healthcare, culture, retirement, and full democratic rights.[5]
As a member of the Workers League, White reported on the 10-week strike by Appalachian coal miners in early 1981 and the Solidarity Day march on September 19, 1981, in Washington, DC where half a million workers protested President Reagan’s firing of 11,000 striking PATCO air traffic controllers and the smashing of their union. He has been active in the party’s interventions in the working class since the 1980s, providing on-the-spot reporting of strikes at Greyhound Bus, Hormel, Eastern Airlines, Pittston Coal, Caterpillar, Verizon, UPS, public schools in Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, West Virginia and Oklahoma, the oil refineries and many others.
White authored a book, published in 1990, entitled Death on the Picket Line: The Story of John McCoy. The book, an investigative report, treats the killing of a militant coal miner, McCoy, as well as the history of the United Mine Workers (UMW) in West Virginia.[7] He has written extensively on the history of the American working class, including the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike and Flint Sit-downs in 1936-37.
White is also the Editor of the World Socialist Web Site Autoworkers Newsletter.[14] White announced the creation of the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter in July 2015, as a means to oppose "UAW Nationalism", pension cuts, poverty wages, and unemployment, and to call for the abolishment of the two-tier wage system, and develop international unity among autoworkers.[15] The Autoworkers Newsletter played a substantial role in the "No vote" carried out by Fiat Chrysler workers and Nexteer workers in 2015 against the proposed contract.[16]
The newsletter and the WSWS played a role in rallying support for GM workers in Silao, Mexico who were fired in 2019 for refusing to work overtime during strike by GM workers in the US and encouraging workers to shut down the auto industry protect autoworkers from the spread of COVID-19 in March 2020.[17][18] The Autoworker Newsletter supported Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman who ran as a socialist candidate for United Auto Workers president in 2022 and Lehman’s lawsuit opposing the disenfranchisement of UAW members.[19][20]
In 2023, White interviewed autoworkers and commented extensively on UAW President Shawn Fain’s “stand up strike” and the UAW labor agreements, which have opened the door for massive job cuts in the global auto industry. White denounced Fain’s endorsement of US President Biden, writing a comment titled, “The UAW apparatus backed the war criminal in the White House.”[21]
During his early years in the Workers League, White also served as editor of its youth newspaper, the Young Socialist, and interviewed Gary Tyler in Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana in 1985. In 1974, the 16-year-old black youth was arrested and falsely accused of murder in a state conspiracy backed by Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. In 2016, Gary was released after serving 42 years in prison, including many on death row, and recently reconnected with several party members who campaigned for his freedom, including White, during an exhibit of his artwork in Detroit.
White was active in the 1993 Citizens Inquiry into the Mack Avenue Fire, which opposed the witch hunt of the parents of seven children killed in a Detroit house fire that occurred after the city and electric company shut off utilities to the impoverished family.[22][23] White was also active in Detroit's Committee Against Utility Shutoffs (CAUS) and organized hearings on fires in low-income neighborhoods.[24][25]
In October 2013, White participated in the Socialist Equality Party’s protest against the threatened sale of artwork at the Detroit Institute of Arts and gave introductory report to the Workers Inquiry into the Bankruptcy of Detroit and the Attack on the DIA & Pensions on February 15, 2014.[26][27]
On January 24, 2021, White was invited to speak on the Jimmy Dore Show to discuss the strike by Hunts Point produce workers in New York City. The YouTube personality brought White on without informing him that Dore’s previous guest was a member of the Boogaloo Boys, an armed far-right militia group that actively participated in Trump’s January 6 coup attempt and the plot to kidnap and murder Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.[28]
White began by saying the Socialist Equality Party opposes Dore’s strategy and “the idea that somehow there can be unity of left and right.” He continued, “There is a historical precedent. The Nazis called themselves ‘revolutionists’ and opponents of the international Jewish capitalist conspiracy. This has nothing to do with left politics. My movement, the Socialist Equality Party, is seeking to build a genuine movement of the working class. We are above all internationalists. The right wing promotes nationalism.”[29]
2024 vice presidential campaign
In February 2024, White was selected to be the vice presidential candidate of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the 2024 United States presidential election. During his campaign he visited various picket lines, anti-genocide protests, and funerals for workers killed in industrial workplaces.
In May 2024, White visited the site of the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster in Baltimore, where 6 migrant workers died.[30]
Also in May 2024, White attended the funeral of Tywaun Long, an autoworker at Michigan’s Dearborn Truck Assembly plant, who collapsed at work and later died of a heart attack.[31]
White gave a speech at a vigil for Gaza organized by the holocaust survivor Rene Lichtman. In his remarks, White stated, "this genocide would not be possible without the military, political and financial support of the Biden administration and both parties in Washington."[32]
White also spoke at the July 24 demonstration held by the Socialist Equality Party in Washington D.C. against Netanyahu.[33]
Election campaigns (1996-2016)
In 1996, White ran as the first presidential candidate for the newly-formed Socialist Equality Party (SEP) with vice-presidential candidate Fred Mazelis.[34][35]
In 2008, White ran as the SEP presidential candidate with vice-presidential candidate Bill Van Auken.[38][39][40] The write-in campaign was accompanied by a redesign of the Socialist Equality Party's website, which would rehost articles written by both candidates for the World Socialist Web Site.[41][42]
Reporting on a campaign speech by White at the University of Michigan, the student newspaper wrote, “White said he is running to provide a political alternative to Obama and McCain, both of whom support the bailout. ‘Both of them are preparing to issue a joint statement urging the passage of what would be the greatest theft of public assets in the history of the country, to bail out financial speculators at the direct expense of working people,’ he said. ‘We’re running in order to make the case for a socialist alternative. If the resources of the country have to be mobilized to avert a financial catastrophe, then the great financial institutions should be put under the public and democratic ownership of the working people.’”[43]
In 2012, White ran as the SEP presidential candidate with vice-presidential candidate Phyllis Scherrer. The campaign was announced from the Cooper Tire factories in Findlay, Ohio, where workers were locked out for contesting contract negotiations.[44] The White-Scherrer ticket was on the ballot in Wisconsin, Louisiana, and had write-in status for Michigan. White visited Canada, Germany, England and Sri Lanka to campaign for socialism and an international working-class movement.[45]
In 2016, White ran as the SEP presidential candidate with vice-presidential candidate Niles Niemuth.[2] In an interview with Russia Today, White explained, “For years social opposition has been channeled back into the Democratic Party, which has presented itself as a “people’s party,” pointing to role of the leaders of the 2003 anti-war protests, the Occupy Wall Street and the Sanders campaign. “There is no national solution for American workers or Greek workers, we’re confronting huge transnational corporations that can only be fought through the international unity of the working class.”[48]
Speaking to the Legal Reader during 2016 campaign, White was asked to explain the difference between the Socialist Equality Party and those groups the SEP refers to as the “pseudo left.” White explained that the Socialist Equality Party traces its roots back to the political struggle by Leon Trotsky for revolutionary internationalism against Stalinist bureaucracy’s nationalist and reactionary program of “socialism in a single country.” After World War II, the orthodox Trotskyists, White said, had to fight and ultimately defeat political tendencies associated with Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel, which tried to liquidate the Fourth International into the existing Stalinist, Social Democratic, bourgeois nationalist and trade union apparatuses.[49]
“So, we call them ‘pseudo-left’ not as an epithet but to describe those organizations that present themselves as sort of anti-establishment or even in some cases socialist, but whose politics are pro-war and articulate the interests of the top ten percent, that layer of the upper middle class that does have some real concerns over how wealth is being distributed at the top and is really concerned about, you know, getting its own cut of the spoils. But they’re not looking to overthrow capitalism.”[50]
Related Research Articles
Walter Philip Reuther was an American leader of organized labor and civil rights activist who built the United Automobile Workers (UAW) into one of the most progressive labor unions in American history. He considered labor movements not as narrow special interest groups but as instruments to advance social justice and human rights in democratic societies. He leveraged the UAW's resources and influence to advocate for workers' rights, civil rights, women's rights, universal health care, public education, affordable housing, environmental stewardship and nuclear nonproliferation around the world. He believed in Swedish-style social democracy and societal change through nonviolent civil disobedience. He cofounded the AFL-CIO in 1955 with George Meany. He survived two attempted assassinations, including one at home where he was struck by a 12-gauge shotgun blast fired through his kitchen window. He was the fourth and longest serving president of the UAW, serving from 1946 until his death in 1970.
The United Auto Workers (UAW), fully named International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States and southern Ontario, Canada. It was founded as part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s and grew rapidly from 1936 to the 1950s. The union played a major role in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party under the leadership of Walter Reuther. It was known for gaining high wages and pensions for automotive manufacturing workers, but it was unable to unionize auto plants built by foreign-based car makers in the South after the 1970s, and it went into a steady decline in membership; reasons for this included increased automation, decreased use of labor, mismanagement, movements of manufacturing, and increased globalization. After a successful strike at the Big Three in 2023, the union organized its first foreign plant (VW) in 2024.
Leonard Freel Woodcock was President of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the first US ambassador to the People's Republic of China after being the last Chief of the US Liaison Office in Beijing.
James E. Harris is an American communist politician, perennial candidate, meatpacker, trade unionist, and member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was the party's candidate for President of the United States in 1996, 2000, and 2012. Harris also served as an alternate candidate for Róger Calero in 2004 and 2008 in states where Calero could not qualify for the ballot due to being born in Nicaragua. He served for a time as the national organization secretary of the SWP and was a staff writer for the party's newspaper, The Militant, in New York.
The Socialist Equality Party is a Trotskyist political party in Sri Lanka. It was founded in 1968 as the Revolutionary Communist League by former student members of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) who joined the International Committee of the Fourth International. They remained loyal to Gerry Healy until the majority of the International split from his organisation. Since the death of its founder and leader Keerthi Balasooriya in December 1987, Wije Dias assumed the leadership. In 1996, it changed its name to the Socialist Equality Party, in line with other members of the surviving ICFI. In the 2005 Sri Lankan presidential election, the party's candidate, Wije Dias, came 11th of 13 candidates, with 3,500 votes (0.04%).
Owen Frederick Bieber was an American labor union activist. He was president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) from 1983 to 1995.
i.e. America Radio Network was a Detroit-based radio network consisting primarily of liberal talk and lifestyle shows. They were owned by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and broadcast nationally from 1996 to 2004, via radio stations and a webcast.
The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) formed in 1969 in Detroit, Michigan. The League united a number of different Revolutionary Union Movements (RUMs) that were growing rapidly across the auto industry and other industrial sectors—industries in which Black workers were concentrated in Detroit in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The formation of the League was an attempt to form a more cohesive political organ guided by the principles of Black liberation and Marxism-Leninism in order to gain political power and articulate the specific concerns of Black workers through political action. While the League was only active for a short period of time, it was a significant development in a time of increasing militancy and political action by Black workers and in the context of both the Black liberation and Marxist-Leninist movements in the United States.
The International Youth Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is the youth and student organization of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Committee of the Fourth International, an international Trotskyist organization. Launched in 2006, the IYSSE aims to build an international socialist movement of students and workers opposing militarist violence, social inequality and attacks on democratic rights. The IYSSE continues the work of its predecessor the Students for Social Equality and the International Students for Social Equality, with student clubs at Universities and High Schools worldwide.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is an unregistered Trotskyist political party in Australia. The SEP was established in 2010 as the successor party to the Socialist Labour League, which was founded in 1972 as the Australian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).
Olga M. Madar was the first woman to serve on the United Auto Workers (UAW) International Executive Board.
Joseph Kishore is an American Marxist and writer who has been active in the Trotskyist movement since 1999. He is the National Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and a writer for the World Socialist Web Site.
Maurice Sugar was an American political activist and labor attorney. He is best remembered as the General Counsel of the United Auto Workers Union from 1937 to 1946.
The Spark is a Trotskyist group in the United States aligned internationally with the Lutte Ouvrière tendency.
The Autoworker Caravan is an advocacy group dedicated to promoting the interests of Unionized American Autoworkers. It is primarily based in Detroit Michigan, but has a network of activists covering virtually every major American facility operated by the Big Three automobile manufacturers. The Caravan is composed of both active and retired UAW members. It is also sometimes referred to as the AWC.
David North is an American Marxist, who has been active in the international Trotskyist movement since 1971. He is currently the National Chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States (SEP), formerly the Workers League. He served as the National Secretary of the SEP until the party's congress in 2008.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is a Trotskyist political party in the United States. SEP first formed in 1964 as the American Committee for the Fourth International, created by expelled members of the Socialist Workers Party. SEP and its previous forms were associated with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), a Trotskyist political international.
Roy Louis Reuther was an American labor organizer. He was one of the leaders of the historic Flint sit-down strike that gave birth to the United Auto Workers (UAW). Along with his brothers Walter and Victor, he helped build the UAW into the most powerful industrial union in the United States. Later, as political director for the UAW, he spearheaded efforts to expand voter participation, and was deeply involved in the civil rights movement.
Trust was a political commercial aired preceding the 1992 United States presidential election, during the Republican presidential primaries, in support of the re-election campaign of President George H. W. Bush. The 30-second TV spot attacked conservative columnist Pat Buchanan, who was challenging Bush for the Republican nomination, for owning a foreign-produced Mercedes-Benz and for criticizing his American-made vehicles while speaking in favor of American manufacturing.
The 2023 United Auto Workers strike was a labor strike involving automobile workers in the labor union United Auto Workers (UAW) and the three unionized automakers in the United States—Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Stellantis. These three automakers' factories combined employ about 145,000 UAW members and produce about 50 percent of the vehicles manufactured annually in the US, accounting for 1.5 percent of US GDP. The strike began on September 15, 2023, when the union was unable to reach a deal with the three automakers. It was the first trilateral strike against the three automakers in the union's history.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
