BY STEFANIE TRICE

NEWARK, New Jersey - At a pizza joint outside the Ford assembly plant in Edison, New Jersey, James Harris met to discuss politics with 12 of the plant's United Auto Workers members on June 10. Harris was accompanied by Tom Alter, the Young Socialists leader who has been touring with him, as well as an entourage of local campaign supporters.

Harris, the Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. president, and Alter had begun the day with an interview by the daily Bergen Record, which published a substantial article on Harris's campaign the next day.

"I've heard about democracy all my life but I've never seen it in action. Would a socialist government still be operated by certain departments?" asked one of the auto workers.

"The problem now is not governmental forms, it's who the government serves," Harris replied. "The U.S. government is organized for the rich; we're fighting for a workers and farmers government, that serves the majority. In Cuba, costs for retirement and education are guaranteed by the state. Why can a poor country do this?"

"I was drawn to this movement because as my experience as a Black man," said another worker. "I've been looking for the way to end my oppression. It seems to me now that it is innate in capitalism in general. How does socialism deal with that?"

"In Cuba," Harris said, "white barbers wouldn't cut Blacks' hair. With a revolutionary government, this was changed by racist barbers' shops being shut down. Only after this action was taken, upon orders of the Cuban militia, did they cut the customer's hair. Racist divisions within the working class don't come from us, they come from the ruling class."

When asked about jobs going overseas, Harris responded, "The same people who hire and fire you are the same ones who will tell you that immigrants take your jobs. We start from the right to a job for all working people anywhere." At the end of the discussion, four people at the meeting signed up to get involved in the campaign. BY ELLEN HAYWOOD

ATLANTA, Georgia - The five-day tour of Laura Garza here registered gains for the socialist movement. Six youth attended a meeting of Young Socialists for Harris and Garza, a 24-year-old auto worker joined the Young Socialists, and a Guatemalan construction worker asked to join the Socialist Workers Party. Garza is the SWP's candidate for vice-president of the United States.

Her first stop was visiting garment workers during two lunch periods at a mop factory organized by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). "Democrats and Republicans want to cut back the only items in the federal budget that are spent on millions of working people - Social Security, Medicaid, and welfare payments," Garza said. "They don't touch the rest of the budget that goes to the rich." Several workers nodded and said, "That's right."

Jamaal, an 18-year-old who recently moved to Atlanta from a small town in South Carolina, and Angela, an army veteran and former postal worker, sat down with the vice presidential candidate for about 20 minutes of discussion. Garza then moved from table to table talking with workers from the United States, Colombia, Mexico, and Haiti.

During the next lunch period, Paul, a young worker who is Black and helped organize the union at the plant two years ago, quizzed the socialist candidate more about the Cuban revolution. He has been reading the book Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto Che Guevara.

Another highlight of the tour was the 30 youth who came to Jittery Joe's Cafe in Athens, Georgia, to hear Garza speak. The event had been organized by two young people who attended a Memorial Day weekend BBQ for the Georgia Socialist Workers candidates. The first person to speak in the discussion after Garza's presentation said that the University of Georgia at Athens "generates a labor pool of young people for the local restaurants and industries. It means a lot of young workers here are paid below minimum wage and subject to abusive conditions -

like if you are 5 minutes late they dock you a whole hour's pay. You are here in the deep South talking about unionism and workers fighting for our rights - we need that."

At the campaign rally that wound up the tour, one third of the participants were young workers or students. Campaign supporters here had invited Ken Piaro, a member of the Movement in Solidarity with the Ogoni People (MOSOP), who recently was forced into exile by death threats from the Nigerian military regime. The Ogoni people have been fighting Shell Oil's destruction of their farmland and have been subject to brutal repression by the Nigerian government. Garza welcomed Piaro's participation. "This shows how opposite the socialist campaign is from the Democrats and Republicans," she said. "We urge working people to look around the world at other oppressed people's struggles and see what we can do to join our fights together."

Clint Ivie and Karolina Bjornheden, both members of Young Socialists for Harris and Garza (YSHG), urged the other young people present to "go out on campaign tables to meet other youth and learn from the discussions." They invited others to go with them on the U.S.-Cuba Youth Exchange trip.

Also attending the meeting was a textile worker who drove up from LaGrange, Georgia, about two hours from Atlanta, to hear Garza. A reporter from the area Spanish-language newspaper came to the rally to interview the socialist candidate.

At the campaign rally, industrial workers and others present contributed $1,032 to the $90,000 socialist campaign fund and pledged another $435 pledged.

Stefanie Trice is a member of the United Transportation Union in Newark.Ellen Haywood is a member UNITE Local 2523 in Atlanta.  
 
 
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