D'Artagnan Collier

The Socialist Equality Party is running D’Artagnan Collier for Michigan State House of Representative in the 9th District for the November 2 elections. Supporters of the campaign are currently gathering the 600 signatures needed by July 15 to put Collier on the ballot.

Collier, 41, is a city worker and lifelong resident of Detroit whose father was a Chrysler worker. He was the SEP candidate for Detroit mayor in 2009 and has spent his entire adult life as a leading member of the socialist movement fighting in the interests of the working class. Most recently, Collier was a commissioner in the Citizens Inquiry into the Dexter Avenue Fire and is currently a member of the Committee to Oppose Utility Shutoffs (CAUS).

The 9th district, in which Collier lives, is an area in Northern Detroit. It comprises a roughly rectangular region between 8 Mile Road on the north and Fenkell on the south, and between Redford Township on the west and Ferguson Ave on the east. The incumbent and Collier's principal opponent is Shannelle Jackson, a Democrat.

Collier’s campaign will be aimed at uniting the working class throughout the Metro Detroit area in a common struggle against the politicians of big business in both the Democratic and Republican parties. It will encourage and promote independent organizations of the working class such CAUS, which is campaigning against DTE’s deadly policy of cutting off heat and gas to hundreds of thousands of homes.

The campaign will put forward a socialist program for the working class. Collier's election platform will include:

• A massive public works program to end poverty and create jobs

• An immediate end to all school closures and cuts in education

• An end to all utility shutoffs, home foreclosures and evictions

• A massive program of wealth redistribution to pay for critical social needs

• The nationalization of the banks and major corporations

The SEP's campaign will insist on the need to break with the Democratic and Republican Parties. In Detroit, the Democratic Party is presiding over the further destruction of the city, already plagued with 50 percent unemployment, and the shutdown of dozens of public schools. At a national level, the Obama administration is spearheading the attack on social programs and education, after bailing out the banks and expanding US militarism.

The problems facing workers in Detroit cannot be solved in Detroit alone. What is required is the political mobilization of the working class on a national and international level against the capitalist system. The alternative to capitalism is socialism, the democratic control of the productive forces in the interests of social need.

The SEP encourages all working people in the Detroit-area to help gather signatures to put D'Artagnan Collier on the ballot. We urge workers throughout the country and internationally to support the campaign. To participate or find out more, contact us today.