The Working Class Party candidate for the 4th U.S. Congressional district in Illinois, Ed Hershey, got 3.4% of the vote in the General Election on November 8th 2022, or 4,351 votes.
Starting this past spring, a small handful of people in Chicago and its suburbs worked to gather nearly 8,000 signatures to put Working Class Party on the ballot. Then, starting in late summer, they went back out to campaign for it. They talked to their friends, family and coworkers, went to markets, festivals and parks, and stood in front of drug stores and train stations, all to raise the idea that working-class people need our own political organization, our own political voice.
Having a party on the ballot in one congressional district is far from building the working class party we need. But it did allow people in this district to express the idea that the working class needs to organize itself politically, and independently from the two big parties that run this society in the interests of big business. And, it showed that there are thousands of people who agree with this idea. So while this election did not solve the problem of building a working class party, it did raise it in front of part of the population. This is important, because there is no answer to the increasing problems of the society we live in until workers organize in their own interests.