BY VERÓNICA POSES AND JOSÉ ARAVENA

ST. PAUL, Minnesota - A growing number of young workers and students across the country are getting involved in the Socialist Workers election campaign as Young Socialists for Harris and Garza.

Young campaign activists joined a Cinco de Mayo parade here celebrating Mexico's revolutionary holiday. Among them was 22-year- old Doug Nelson, himself a Socialist Workers candidate for Minnesota state assembly. The night before, they met to make a banner promoting the socialist candidates, as well as signs against police brutality, for immigrant rights, and in defense of the Cuban revolution. At the event the campaigners invited people to a May 6 organizing meeting at the local Socialist Workers campaign headquarters.

A dozen people attended that meeting. During the discussion one person asked whether socialism was dead. Ned Kelly, a campaign activist, replied, "Socialism is not dead, although the capitalist media would like us to think that it was." Young Socialists member Jack Willey added, "There is a living example that we can look to today, and that example is Cuba."

A young mexicana attended the meeting after meeting the socialist campaign at Cinco de Mayo. She was marching in a contingent in the parade, when she saw an activist who was promoting the U.S.-Cuba Youth Exchange with a bright sandwich board that read "Visit Cuba" in Spanish.

She rushed out of the contingent and said, "I want to go to Cuba." She got literature about the Exchange, and then went to the nearby Pathfinder literature table, met the socialist candidates, bought a copy of the Militant, and found out about the organizing meeting. After the discussion with other young campaign supporters, she signed up to participate in Saturday morning campaigning and literature sales the next week.

Members of the Young Socialists from Peoria and Chicago held a meeting at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, for young people interested in the Socialist Workers campaign. Two students came, Dawn from Bradley University in Peoria and Chaminda, a 23-year-old Knox College student who is originally from Sri Lanka. The discussion went for about two hours.

The Young Socialists for Harris and Garza explained why the campaign is a fighting alternative to all the parties that support or accept capitalism, including the Republicans, Democrats, and Green Party. They pointed out that the candidates are working-class political activists and encouraged young supporters of their campaign to join them. Other students dropped by to listen in to the discussion and add their opinions.

Chaminda said he was part of the student protests in Sri Lanka and first thought that the United States would be a paradise. He came to know it as a country where democracy is not practiced, however, he said. Supporters of the campaign suggested that youth who are interested in seeing a true democracy work should go to Cuba.

Dawn asked how Cuba is different from the regimes that called themselves communist in Eastern Europe and how workers and farmers can create a leadership that doesn't become bureaucratic. The best example, campaign supporters said, is in the book Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto Che Guevara. Dawn and a Young Socialists member from Peoria are planning classes on the book.

At the end of the meeting, both Chaminda and Dawn filled out applications for the Youth Exchange and are planning to go to Cuba this summer. They also signed up for upcoming activities surrounding the socialist election campaign.

Supporters of the Socialist Workers campaign were among those who attended an April 25 meeting at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to hear Garza speak on a panel discussion on Cuba.

Four youths signed up to work on the Harris and Garza campaign at the event. "We've signed up about 10 Young Socialists for Harris and Garza so far," said Stefanie Trice, who is also a Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Congress in New Jersey.

Socialist Workers presidential candidate James Harris, just back from Cuba, where he and other U.S. unionists attended the national convention of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers, is launching his spring election campaign tour Saturday, May 18, with a public meeting in Washington, D.C.

On May 22 at noon, he and vice presidential candidate Laura Garza will hold a news conference at the National Press Club in that city. Harris's next stops will be New York and Boston. Campaign supporters in Boston are sponsoring a public forum June 1, as they kick off petitioning to put their statewide slate of candidates on the ballot.

Garza will kick off her spring tour in Minneapolis with a public talk on Saturday, May 11, at the Pathfinder bookstore. The Young Socialists were among those who invited Garza to campaign in that city, where the group has its national headquarters. Garza's next campaign stop will be Chicago.

The Socialist Workers 1996 National Campaign headquarters is located at 214-16 Avenue A in New York City. Requests for Harris and Garza to speak in your area should be directed to the national headquarters at its mailing address: P.O. Box 2652, New York, NY 10009; telephone and fax: (212) 388-1659.  
 
 
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