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Vol.64/No.1      January 10, 2000 
 
 
New Jersey: garment workers place books, join in event at book shop  
 
 
BY JANE HARRIS 
PERTH AMBOY, New Jersey—Settled in the downtown district of this town 20 miles south of Newark is the Lucaya Bookstore, a Spanish-language store just celebrating its second anniversary.

In October the owners were visited by two volunteer distributors of Pathfinder Press who work at a nearby garment factory. The proprietors ordered some books, and have displayed some of the titles in prominent spots in the store.

Lucaya often organizes evening gatherings to celebrate and discuss various books in the shop, and invited Martín Koppel, editor of the Spanish-language translation of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions, to speak about that book.

Lucaya produced a flyer inviting its customers to the December 17 event. "This work is dedicated to workers, students and intellectuals who are seeking explanations and alternatives to the violence and brutality that permanently affect the world and that are sharpening as the new millennium begins," read the leaflet in Spanish.

The two garment workers who placed the initial Pathfinder order came to the event with two other workers from the plant, members of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. At the end of the evening, one left the store with the book in hand.

Koppel pointed to The Changing Face of U.S. Politics as a handbook for those resisting the brutal effects of capitalism and seeking solutions to the racist discrimination, women's inequality, national oppression, and other reactionary social relations reproduced daily by this system. There is a new mood of struggle among workers and farmers today, he said, pointing as one example to the fight of 33,000 New York City transit workers to win a decent contract.

Koppel's also touched on how the Clinton administration has been leading the attack on workers' social wage, the rise of incipient fascist currents in the United States such as Patrick Buchanan, and the struggle of the Puerto Rican people to get the U.S. Navy out of Vieques.

"The working class is potentially stronger than ever today," Koppel said. He pointed to the strengthening of the working class through the biggest wave of migration ever, the fact that the fall of the Stalinist governments was not a victory but an historic defeat for U.S. imperialism, and to workers' struggles in this country linking up with one another and with working farmers.

A lively discussion period, both formal and informal followed among the 15 people in attendance, including exchanges on the Cuban revolution and on the transit workers' battle for union rights.  
 
 
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