Austin, Minnesota, paper interviews Trowe
The following article appeared in the September 7 issue of the Austin, Minnesota, Post-Bulletin, headlined, "Socialist VP candidate calls Austin home."
BY JAIME LARSON-MCLOONE
The Socialist Workers Party candidate for vice president of the United States has called Austin her home for more than a year, but she's seen little of the city in the past three months.
Margaret Trowe moved to Austin to take a job at Quality Pork Processors Inc. in June 1999 and to help promote her party in Minnesota. Now she's campaigning with Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate James Harris throughout the country.
"We kind of got it rolling, and I got on the road to some of the bigger towns," Trowe said in Los Angeles. She said she's visited 17 states and made a short trip to New Zealand since she started campaigning.
Trowe, 52, said she campaigned in Austin about six weeks ago outside QPP, where she worked for about a year. She left her job in June to focus on the campaign.
Trowe said she's promoting the notion of a country run by and for workers and farmers. Capitalists have basked in the nation's recent prosperity at the expense of those groups, she said.
Because of that, Trowe said, her party is gaining supporters.
"It's the capitalists themselves who are producing what will be a revolutionary movement," she said.
Trowe said she and Harris are on the ballot in 14 states, including Minnesota, and the District of Columbia. She said she has received support from former co-workers at QPP and hopes to become better known in Austin.
Austin Mayor Bonnie Rietz said Monday she wasn't aware that Austin was the home of a vice presidential candidate.
"It must be quite fascinating to be on a national ticket and running for a national office," Rietz said. "It'd be fun to just meet her and talk to her and see how things are going for her."
State Sen. Pat Piper, DFL [Democratic Farmer-Labor Party]-Austin, said she, too, was unaware of Trowe's campaign, but she commended Trowe for her promoting her beliefs.
"I always admire anybody who takes the leap into saying, 'I want to run for a public office'," Piper said. "It's difficult enough, but when you're running for a party that's not well known, it's very difficult. But it's good that people do get involved."
Before moving to Austin, Trowe worked for two years at a meat-packing plant in Marshalltown, Iowa.
Trowe said she got involved in socialist issues as a teen-ager in the 1960s.
"Like many teen-agers, I didn't want to become part of the system that divided working people," she said. "I didn't want to be a part of continuing racism or oppression."
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