April 12, 2008

Media release

Socialist candidate for United States president to visit Auckland

Róger Calero, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for president of the United States, will visit Auckland on May 17-20. He is available for media interviews during his four-day visit.

Calero, 38, is a writer for the socialist newsweekly the Militant and an editor of its Spanish-language section, El Militante (www.themilitant.com). He ran for president on the Socialist Workers ticket in 2004. A member of the Socialist Workers Party's National Committee, he lives in the Bronx, New York.

Calero has participated in, and built support for, strikes and union-organising drives in the Midwest and West of the United States, as well as in New York and elsewhere.

He has been active for years in the fight for the rights of immigrants. In 2002 the Nicaraguan-born socialist was arrested, jailed, and threatened with deportation on his return to the U.S. from a Militant reporting trip to Cuba and Mexico.

A broad campaign by supporters of immigrant and workers’ rights, with the backing of the Socialist Workers Party, prevented his deportation. Following this victory, Calero visited New Zealand as part of an international “Fight to Win” tour, thanking those in this country who had supported him.

Calero campaigns in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution. Last year he attended an international conference in Havana in solidarity with the Cuban Five, who are revolutionaries jailed in U.S. prisons on frame-up “conspiracy” charges. Over the past year in New York, he has helped build demonstrations for the freedom of the Five; protests against the police killing of Sean Bell; and rallies for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

He has recently reported for the Militant from Venezuela about struggles by workers and farmers for land, jobs, and improved living conditions.

Below are links to the Socialist Workers campaign platform and Calero's biography.

To arrange an interview with Róger Calero, contact Patrick Brown – details above.

Links:

Róger Calero’s biography: http://www.themilitant.com/2008/7202/720253.html

Socialist Workers ’08 platform: http://www.themilitant.com/2008/7204/720450.html

ENDS

© Scoop Media