Twin Cities YS builds solidarity with labor battles
The Young Socialists is an international organization of young workers, students, and other youth fighting for socialism. For more information write to the Young Socialists, P.O. Box 33, Times Square Post Office, New York, NY 10108, or call (212) 695-1809, or send an e-mail to: young_socialists@hotmail.com
BY JOHN HAND
AND ANNA HARRIS
ST. PAUL, Minnesota--The Young Socialists chapter has been actively building solidarity with the deepening labor struggles that are taking place here. These struggles include the union-organizing drive at Dakota Premium Foods, the strike by more than 1,400 hotel and restaurant workers, and the fight by 450 Teamsters Local 792 strikers at Pespi-Cola. These fights have strengthened each other and given militant workers a chance to link up with one another. The YS has also taken this opportunity to further orient ourselves to the working class and help build a revolutionary youth organization.
Several teams have gone out to the picket lines at Pepsi-Cola in Burnsville and to several hotels in the area during the strike by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union. Socialists workers and youth from Canada joined the teams for one week to get a feel for the depth and interconnection of these different struggles and to be part of their fights. We have campaigned with the Militant in working-class neighborhoods, on street corners, university campuses, and at several plant gates. By using the Militant, our teams actively build solidarity with the fights taking place and bring broader politics to the fighters themselves.
On June 23 alone, two teams sold to Steelworkers on their way to work. We then walked the picket line of striking hotel workers, who were quick to explain their fight and gave us signs so we could join in the picket. Another team went to the university campus where they sold four Militants to students in summer session classes.
Our team later went to the Pepsi picket lines where the workers were excited to see the Militant's coverage of their fight and passed the paper from one person to the next. One worker who bought the Militant has been in several roving pickets. These teams of strikers follow the scab trucks and throw up a picket line wherever they deliver. We spotted a team of roving pickets at a convenience store in St. Paul, and the hotel strikers reported that the a team of striking Teamsters had visited their picket line the day before. All in all, we sold seven copies of the Militant at the Pepsi picket line.
Through participating in these struggles, the Young Socialists have built the YS summer school sessions in the Twin Cities. These classes have taken up such things as the necessity of centering our politics in the industrial unions, why revolutionary-minded youth should orient to the working class, and why working people must build a proletarian party.
The sessions have been enriched by the militancy and combativeness shown by the Dakota Premium, Pepsi Cola, and hotel workers, and have been attended by workers, students, and young people interested in the Young Socialists.
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July 17, 2000