This was a highlight of the team's work over the past week, which included meeting with tomato workers fighting to unionize in Willcox, Arizona, and selling the Militant and Pathfinder books on the campus of the University of Arizona, at community tables, door-to-door in working-class neighborhoods, and to Arizona miners getting off work at the Asarco copper mine in Sahuarita and at a coal mine in Kayenta, also on the Navajo Nation.

The miners at P&M, members of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) Local 1332, called an extended picket for 6:00 a.m. in Window Rock, New Mexico, after walking out at 12:01 a.m. on May 15.

A team of socialists, who came from California, Arizona, and Wyoming, joined the 50 miners who were out on the highway holding up homemade UMWA signs that expressed their displeasure with the contract.

Over the course of the morning, the picket line swelled to more than 200 miners, family members, and supporters at three different locations.

Many were three-time strike veterans and knew how to keep warm on a cold morning picket, standing on either side of a highway near roaring bonfires. The majority of the cars honked in support of the miners as they passed on the highway.

This reporter moved from group to group, stopping to talk to some veteran fighters and telling them of the copper mine that we visited earlier in the week, which is on a Native American reservation in Tucson, and of the fighting tomato workers in Willcox and their struggle to become union members. The miners were pleased to hear the news of other fighters demanding their rights from the bosses. As we exchanged stories they saw similarities between themselves and the tomato workers.

Following the picket line, this reporter and Patricia Gutiérrez, a member of the Young Socialists at the University of California at Santa Cruz, headed to a nearby coal mine in Kayenta, Arizona.

Gutiérrez spoke to miners getting off work for the day and showed them the Militant. We also set up a Pathfinder literature table at a busy convenience store. By the end of the trip Kayenta miners had bought 30 copies of the paper.

As we were leaving, a high school student who is the son of a Kayenta miner approached the socialist literature table wondering what all of our books were about. He stayed at the table and discussed politics for an hour and a half, and asked to keep in contact with the Young Socialists.

The following day, supporters of the socialist press went door-to-door in a working-class neighborhood in Tucson and sold a subscription to the Militant and a special issue of Perspectiva Mundial with a lead article on "INS assault in Miami: blow to the working class."

We then set up a literature table in a local shopping plaza. We sold all but two of our Militants and met a young man whose father is one of the striking miners near Window Rock. He stayed at the table for an hour to discuss a wide range of political topics, bought two copies of the Militant, and signed up to stay in contact with the Young Socialists.

Louis Turner is a member of the Young Socialists in Tucson.  
 
 
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