The Militant (logo) 
   Vol.64/No.44            November 20, 2000 
 
 
New York rally celebrates socialist campaign
Speakers outline course to winning workers to revolutionary politics and organization
(front page)
 
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS  
NEW YORK--James Harris, Socialist Workers Party candidate for president, along with Margaret Trowe, the party's candidate for vice president, were greeted by rousing applause from the 140 people at a campaign wrap-up rally here November 5. "Today we claim victory," said Trowe. "We can register a victory in reaching out to vanguard workers hungry for revolutionary politics and build on those experiences and accomplishments."

"This applause is for what we have all done together," Harris said. "We kept our promise: to take this campaign to working people standing up and resisting the assault by the employers and the bipartisan offensive by the government. We went everywhere we could--to striking steelworkers and coal miners, garment and textile workers fighting for a union, farmers organizing protests to defend their land and livelihood, bus drivers on the picket line, and many others.

"We offered our message of solidarity and support and we engaged in discussion on the central question before working people today," Harris said. "Day after day, Margaret and I were both struck by the openness and interest in the socialist campaign among workers and farmers. We welcomed the fact that many decided to deepen their contact and collaboration with the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists, by joining together in activity, studying Marxist books that contain the lessons of the working-class movement, inviting us back for more discussion, and introducing their co-workers to us. We are just starting to realize the potential there is to recruit workers and farmers to the movement, to joining the Young Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party.

"We make the same promise at the end of the campaign that we made at the beginning," continued Harris. "We are going to have a regular presence in workers districts and in factories, mines, and plants across the country and reach out to workers and farmers in struggle. We will bring with us the ideas and lessons necessary to mount a revolutionary struggle for a workers and farmers government and for socialism."

Other speakers at the rally were Argiris Malapanis, Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Senate who had returned earlier in the week from an international Militant reporting team to Yugoslavia, who spoke on steps being taken by working people there to extend their political space; Paul Pederson, socialist candidate for U.S. Congress in New York who addressed the fight for a democratic, secular Palestine; and Jack Willey, from Grand Junction, Colorado, who spoke on struggles of working people in the United States today and the coming transformation of the American labor movement. Jacob Perasso, a 24-year-old volunteer in the printshop of Pathfinder Press and the party's candidate for U.S. Senate in New York, welcomed everyone to the event.

Gathered at the meeting were socialist workers from a number of generations and varying backgrounds, as well as workers and farmers new to the socialist movement, many with years of experience in the working-class movement both in the United States and other countries. Three day laborers from Farmingville, Long Island, attended. They are helping to lead a struggle to defend the right to live and work and oppose rightist violence against immigrant workers in the area. One had been to a rally for Trowe the previous month in Brooklyn and purchased five copies of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform under Capitalism, by Jack Barnes, in order to start up a discussion group.

Geraldo Sanchez, a worker in Pathfinder's printshop, welcomed them to the meeting, drawing a standing ovation from the audience. He explained that the workers have launched a new organization, the Union of Workers of Long Island, to counter moves by rightists groups to begin organizing across Long Island as well.  
 
A campaign 'for the working man'
A message of support was sent to the meeting by James White, a member of the United Steelworkers of America on strike against Titan Tire in Natchez, Mississippi. Both Harris and Trowe joined the picket line in Natchez on invitation of workers there, and had been introduced to a number of strikers during their visits. Out of these meetings, several workers purchased The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning and suggested classes on the pamphlet with socialist workers from Birmingham, Alabama. White expressed his appreciation to the SWP campaign for the solidarity it extended to the strike and for the campaign standing "for the working man."

During the reception a young construction worker from New York who has been attending weekly classes on the Communist Manifesto hosted by the Young Socialists at the socialists' hall in the Manhattan Garment District asked to join the YS. A garment worker from Pittsburgh traveled to the meeting with a socialist co-worker and other campaign supporters from that city.

Revolutionary-minded working people and youth participated in the wind-up event from North Carolina to New England. Among them was Anna Marie Codario, a farmer from Buena Boro, New Jersey, fighting to hold onto her land. She said she tells all her friends that she's planning to vote for James Harris. "I'm proud that I'm here today," said Codario. "I'm proud that James Harris came to my farm for my rally, the only presidential candidate who did come." Harris and Trowe met with farmers in a number of states and attended rallies of farmers from Washington, D.C., to California.

The following day Trowe attended a campaign wrap-up event in Austin, Minnesota, where she worked as a meat packer and was a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union before launching the campaign. Six of her co-workers attended the public meeting, along with several other people from the town. As with other campaign meetings, workers purchased Pathfinder books and subscriptions to the Militant or Perspectiva Mundial, and at least one expressed interest in joining the party.

At the New York meeting, interest in the campaign and in building a revolutionary workers party capable of leading tens of millions in the fight for power could also be seen at a lively reception and discussions before and after the program. A large table of Pathfinder books, and several others full of used Marxist classics were a feature of the reception hall. Hundreds of books were purchased by young people building their Marxist libraries and workers who discovered titles they needed. A range of used titles in Spanish were especially welcome and snapped up by workers present who hail from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. Many participants went home with armloads or boxes of books.

Supporters of the SWP provided a large spread of refreshments and food, making an excellent atmosphere for political discussion. Attractive photo displays illustrating highlights of the socialist election campaign, the strikes and struggles by workers and unionists, the recent upsurge in Yugoslavia, and of protests backing the Palestinian struggle for self-determination were set up around the reception hall.

Seated on the platform and introduced from the stage were Socialist Workers candidates for Senate and U.S. Congress from New York and New Jersey and a number of other states, including Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.  
 
Worldwide resistance will continue
"We know the capitalists won't slow down their attacks on working people," Trowe said in her talk. "We know the worldwide resistance will continue. And we know our class is being propelled into a mighty struggle for power. We are building the revolutionary communist party that can make a decisive difference in the strength and confidence and unity of our class as it fights for power.

"Throughout this campaign," she said, "we have received a strong response to our message that the capitalist economic boom is at the expense of the majority of working people. Workers know we are working longer and harder, usually for a paycheck that doesn't go as far as it used to.

"We have begun to win an important layer to a deeper understanding that the interests of the working class and the handful of multibillionaire families who run this country are irreconcilably in conflict," Trowe said. "No matter which capitalist candidate gets elected president, he will represent the interests of capital and will build on the bipartisan offensive against the rights and living standard of working people--both at home and abroad--over the past eight years."

The socialist candidate reviewed the bipartisan record of the Democratic Clinton administration and Republican majority in Congress, which included "a wholesale attack on our class under the banner of 'ending welfare as we know it'; increased use of the death penalty--from lethal injections to police executions of workers on the street; and building the Immigration and Naturalization Service into the largest police agency in the country.

"They will push ahead with setting up a so-called 'missile defense' system--actually the first step toward a nuclear first-strike capacity--and continue their imperialist military interventions abroad," stated Trowe. She pointed to troop deployments, bombings, and occupation forces in Yugoslavia, Haiti, Somalia, and the Mideast, including nearly daily bombing of Iraq resulting in ongoing deaths.

The socialist candidate saluted the nearly 1 million workers and farmers who marched in Havana a couple of weeks earlier to protest the most recent intensification of Washington's economic war on working people in Cuba.

A rider to an $80 billion agricultural appropriations bill--which will pour money into the pockets of wealthy agricultural interests at the expense of working farmers--purports to allow sales of food and medicine to Cuba. But by singling out Cuba to deny it a U.S. government or commercial credit for purchases of these goods, it aims to punish working people there for their refusal to bow down to the dictates of U.S. imperialism. The measure also attacks the right of working people to travel abroad by codifying into law the travel ban on U.S. residents visiting Cuba.

"Our campaign tells the truth about Cuba, and in doing so has helped awaken workers and farmers to the fact that they have allies there, and a splendid example of how to carry out a successful struggle for power," stated Trowe. "They can see in Cuba how the unity of workers and farmers is the motor force of the revolution. And how the existence of a revolutionary party is essential to the success of our class to take and hold power."

The Socialist Workers campaign succeeded in winning ballot status in 13 states and the District of Columbia, pointed out Greg McCartan, national director of the SWP campaign. He and Olympia Newton, a leader of the Young Socialists, a member of the national campaign committee and a worker in Pathfinder's printshop, co-chaired the event. McCartan said that over the course of the election campaign Trowe and Harris visited 70 cities and towns across the United States, as well as six countries.

A media book with copies of articles compiled from many of these campaign stops was available for meeting participants to peruse. The scope of the coverage, with a number of articles describing the socialists' political perspectives, was another indication of the impact of the campaign on tens of thousands of workers, farmers, and youth.  
 
New political space in Yugoslavia
Just back from participating in a Militant reporting team to Yugoslavia, Argiris Malapanis, a meat packer in Miami, spoke about the impact of the mass popular revolt and political strike that succeeded in toppling the Milosevic regime in early October. Over the course of about a week, the reporting team visited five cities in Yugoslavia and interviewed some 100 workers and students.

"The fall of the Milosevic regime has opened up new political space for the working class," stated Malapanis. "And working people have been taking advantage of this to speak out, discuss politics, and organize for their rights." These development are significant in light of the brutal bombardment by Washington against the people of Yugoslavia six years ago, the six-week assault in 1999 that devastated many towns in Serbia, and the continued presence of more than 11,000 U.S. troops there.

"Throughout the 10-year conflict in the Balkans, Malapanis said, "most bourgeois commentators tried hard to make us believe that the slaughter in Yugoslavia signified that world civilization is threatening to break down along lines of 'age-old ethnic hatreds.' The truth is the opposite. The slaughter in Yugoslavia is the product of the breakdown of the capitalist world order; it is the product of intensifying conflicts among rival capitalist classes in the imperialist countries and those would-be capitalists--who want to be like the bourgeoisie--in the workers states. These conflicts will increasingly mark politics in the world as long as imperialism exists."

The goal of the imperialists, Malapanis said, is to reimpose capitalism in Yugoslavia, as well as throughout eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union where capitalism was overthrown and state property relations established. But this cannot be done by the slow accumulation of market measures, emphasized Malapanis. Imperialism cannot accomplish this goal without taking on and defeating the working class in Yugoslavia and elsewhere, he said, through bloody military assaults and brutalization of working people.

The new regime, he added, does not represent a qualitative break from the former Milosevic government. Newly elected president Vojislav Kostunica comes from the same privileged bureaucratic caste that has ruled the Yugoslav workers state. But the toppling of the Milosevic's secret police regime creates more possibilities for workers and farmers to engage in political activity, and to become connected to working-class and anti-imperialist struggles around the world.

Malapanis pointed out that work by communists in explaining what has been happening in the Balkans over the past decade is a central part of building a communist movement here in the United States. "Through the course of doing this work in Yugoslavia, individual workers and students have begun reading the Militant and Pathfinder literature, are interested in the class struggle elsewhere in the world--including in the United States, and want to discuss a communist perspective," he said. Having the Militant available on the Internet is one way workers there are able to read the Militant each week, he said.  
 
For a democratic, secular Palestine
The resistance by the Palestinian people over the past six weeks and why class-conscious workers support the demand for a democratic, secular Palestine was the focus of the talk by Paul Pederson, 25, who is organizer of the Brooklyn branch of the SWP. Pederson is a worker in Pathfinder's printshop.

Workers, students, and others of Arab and Palestinian origin--whose numbers are expanding in the United States, along with those of immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere--have organized sizable demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinian people in a large number of cities across the country. A recent demonstration of 15,000 people in New York in support of Israel was countered the next day by a similar-sized action backing the Palestinian cause, something that would have been unheard of even a decade ago. Bringing a communist perspective to these actions and offering workers and students at them an opportunity to deepen their participation in the U.S. class struggle is the central contribution socialist workers can make, Pederson said.

"There is no solution to the Palestinian question in the framework of imperialism," stated Pederson. "The determination of the Palestinian people to fight the brutalities and indignities of Israeli occupation, to fight for the land that was stolen from them is an irresolvable problem for imperialism."

Pederson explained that the state of Israel rests on a false promise by bourgeois forces that Jews could escape Jew hatred and anti-Semitism by establishing their own state based on the dispossession of another people. "The reality is that far from a salvation for the Jews, Israel is a death trap," stated Pederson. "It pushes those who stand behind it into an alliance with the very same class forces that will resort to fascism and anti-Semitism to maintain their rule as the social crisis deepens, and away from the only social force that can forever end these horrors--the toilers of the world."

The demand for a democratic secular Palestine points toward forging a class alliance of the workers and farmers inside Israel who are exploited by the Israeli ruling class and the Palestinians fighting against Tel Aviv's dispossession of their land.

In this context he pointed to the importance of fighters for Palestinian self-determination raising the call for Israel to immediately withdraw from all the territories it occupied in its six-day 1967 war against the Arab peoples.

Pointing to the role of Washington, Pederson commented, "Far from being the honest broker’ for peace, as the U.S. rulers contend, their pursuit of oil and U.S. imperialist class interests make it a deadly enemy of Palestinians, Arabs, Jews, and

others throughout the region."  
 
Social movement in coalfields
Jack Willey, a member of the SWP’s Trade Union Committee and the new Grand Junction, Colorado, branch of the party, took up a number of developments in the labor movement and the participation and response of party and Young Socialists members to them. He pointed to the recent decision of the party’s Ft. Collins branch to relocate to Grand Junction as "a victory for the communist movement" that comes out of the party’s deepening work among miners in the western coalfields. Party members work today in garment shops and textile mills, meatpacking plants, and coal mines and belong--and fight to build--the industrial unions that organize sections of those industries.

Members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) are fighting moves by the Mine Safety and Health Administration to allow coal companies to increase the level of coal dust in the mines; an employer-government assault on health care and safety; and continued steps by the bosses to diminish union organization in coal mines across the country. This reality is fueling a social movement in the coalfields, driving miners and those in the local communities to seek ways to beat back this assault by the operators and the government. It’s these conditions that drive workers toward the union, the United Mine Workers of America, he explained.

Willey described some of the fights by garment workers and meat packers in plants across the country for union recognition, dignity, decent wages, and improved working conditions on the job. Workers at Pillowtex, a large textile company, have recently won drives to win union recognition for the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and Scottsboro, Alabama. This comes a year after the UNITE organizing victory at the company’s mills in Kannapolis, North Carolina, after a 25-year fight.

In garment, textile, and meatpacking plants from the Hunts Point food market in the Bronx to meatpacking plants in the Omaha area, "the union question continues to simmer," stated Willey.

"What will mark the years ahead is growing layers of workers looking for avenues to resist the continuing push by the capitalists to grab ever more profits off our sweat and blood," emphasized Willey. This resistance often takes the form today of "tussles on the job," where workers resist attempts by the boss to cut their pay, medical coverage, or safety rights. These struggles are not usually covered in the big-business dailies or on the evening news. "More and more social questions confronting our class are being fought out through our unions," Willey added.

He pointed to the "growing number of workers reaching out to other unionists to win support for their strikes and to lend a hand of solidarity to other fighters." Among the examples cited were the Tartan Textile workers who struck an industrial laundry in Pompano Beach, Florida, in July then fanned out to other company facilities around the country winning support through sympathy strikes. Workers from Tartan Textile were also in Oceanside, New York, in mid-October to help the laundry workers there win their three-day strike for union recognition.

"The communist movement bases itself today in the industries where workers are responding most immediately to the bosses’ offensive," stated Willey. "This is where a new proletarian vanguard is emerging through experiences, standing up, and resisting the conditions being imposed on them. These fighters who truly ‘come from nowhere’ are drawing more far-reaching conclusions, are open to discussing a revolutionary perspective, and can be won to the communist movement."

One example cited by Willey is the experiences of Frank Forrestal, the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and a coal miner who recently sold five Militant subscriptions to co-workers. One of these new readers, eager to let co-workers know of Forrestal’s Senate bid, asked Forrestal during a work break, "So are you going to tell them or should I?"  
 
Possibilities for recruitment
"There’s a growing convergence between what the SWP and Young Socialists do and the actions of the vanguard of the working class," Harris said in his talk. "The political vanguard of working people in this country is converging with the program of the communist movement. We need to organize ourselves to act on this."

Harris said the SWP’s National Committee had met in New York over the previous days to discuss how to structure the party to respond to possibilities to recruit workers to the movement and to membership in the party.

Building on some initial experience in New York and the response of workers who are getting to know the party in various ways across the country, Harris noted that for the first time in many years "it is possible, through consistent propaganda activity in a workers district, to meet and recruit workers and union members to the party."

Every branch of the party will be carrying out work to find an area where there is a political response by a layer of workers to literature tables featuring the Militant, Perpsectiva Mundial, Pathfinder books, and New International magazine set up by socialist workers and Young Socialists members. Once such a workers district is discovered, party members will establish a hall were they will set up a Pathfinder bookstore, start a regular Militant Labor Forums series, and begin classes with workers and young people they meet who are interested joining the communist movement.

The political priorities and tasks of party branches more and more grow out of what workers are asking the party to do, Harris noted. This includes placing Pathfinder books in stores and libraries, so the legacy of the communist movement can be most accessible to vanguard workers. There are more instances where unionists and other workers, after discovering the wealth of titles available from Pathfinder in English, French, and Spanish, suggest a store, library, or tienda where they are willing to help place books. In addition, supporters of the party have also taken the initiative along these lines. Given the political interest in these titles, expanding the reach of Pathfinder books is a top priority of the movement, Harris said.

During the campaign, both Harris and Trowe offered to hold classes on the basics of scientific socialism in cities they visited. Many campaign supporters took them up on their offer. More working people, such as steelworkers at Titan Tire in Mississippi, are proposing classes together with socialist workers. Establishing regular educational programs to learn, relearn, and internalize the communist program "is a prerequisite for building the communist movement today," Harris said.

Another key task is establishing regular sales and political work at plant gates and mine portals where the party seeks to maintain a long-term presence and contact with the workforce. Other vanguard workers will begin to join this effort, he said, and see how it gives the organized socialist movement a better standing among working people and feel for developments in various industries, as well as recruitment possibilities.

Through these activities, Harris said, party and YS members will be able to more closely follow the debates occurring in bourgeois politics and help to bring a clear, revolutionary working-class perspective in a timely way to other workers and farmers.

One of the participants in the meeting was Dimitris Falis, a new member of the Young Socialists from Montreal who joined the organization after James Harris’s visit to that area in September. He came to the New York meeting to "hear what some experienced leaders of the communist movement have to say. It’s not enough to have courage, or hope and energy, we need to study the lessons of our class."

Victor Serapio and Christian Anival, two workers originally from Guatemala, came to the meeting from New Jersey where they currently reside. Serapio was involved in a movement of peasants in Guatemala to form cooperatives, in an effort to get better terms and prices for the vegetables they grew. He also worked to defend the rights of farm workers. After hearing Harris’s talk he commented, "It’s important to have the party, the movement." He said he considers himself a socialist who bases himself on "the ideas of Che," but noted that he has had few opportunities to read books like those available at this event.

Participants in the meeting contributed $2,000 towards the $110,000 fund drive for the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial.  
 
 
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