The Socialist Equality Party campaign of Bill Van Auken for the United States Senate is gaining a wide audience among workers, students and young people in New York. Van Auken is challenging Senator Hillary Clinton.

Nearly a hundred students heard SEP supporter Nick Rodriguez at an outdoor free speech rally on the campus of Hofstra University on Long Island last week. The rally was sponsored by the Professional Organization in Speech Education (POISE), a student organization. It was open to anyone who wished to participate.

Rodriguez emphasized that only the SEP’s campaign addresses the critical issues: war, the attacks on democratic rights, the assault on living standards, and the growth of social inequality. To demonstrate the complicity of both parties, he asked students to review two recent events: the passage of the Military Commissions Act and the 100-0 vote in the US Senate for $70 billion in new war spending.

He urged students to read the SEP election statement and vote for Bill Van Auken, saying, “Our aim in contesting the elections is to lay the basis for the building of a new mass socialist party of the working class independent of both the Democrats and the Republicans.”

Bill Van Auken was interviewed by the Hofstra student radio station, WRHU. The “Morning Wake Up Call” program aired Tuesday, October 10. The interview can be accessed here in mp3 format.

Many Hofstra students also learned about the campaign when Van Auken was interviewed in the student newspaper, the Chronicle. In the article, “Third Party Challenge,” Van Auken explained, “As the leading contender for the Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential nomination, Senator Clinton is the embodiment of everything that is reactionary and double-dealing within the Democratic Party.

“She voted to grant President Bush virtually unlimited power to launch an illegal war of aggression against Iraq and continues to defend this decision while posing as a critic of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war.”