Participants in the public celebration meeting discussed developments in the class struggle in the region and the need to build a revolutionary leadership of working people to take on imperialism's increasingly brutal onslaught against workers and farmers--from Palestine to Afghanistan, and from the coal mines to teachers jailed for going on strike in New Jersey.

"About a year ago, socialist workers with coal mining experience moved to Western Colorado to deepen our political work in the coalfields," said Alice Kincaid, an underground coal miner, in her opening remarks at the event. Kincaid described the strikes by miners in the region over the past two years and the interest in the Militant and Pathfinder books among mine workers. "The history of the United Mine Workers of America stamps the region," she said.

Kincaid recounted some of the activities of socialist workers since arriving here. "We've met people involved in the fight of the uranium miners and their survivors to gain compensation for death and illnesses caused by the radioactive ore, and have written extensively about their struggle in the Militant. We've done political work on area campuses, including collaborating with a group of students at Colorado College in Colorado Springs who visited Cuba, and who are currently organizing against the imperialist war on Afghanistan," she said. "We participated in an antiracist march of more than 1,000 people in Rifle, Colorado, where a man went on a racist rampage, killing three Mexican workers. These are all examples of why we want to begin having a regular Militant Labor Forum series. The bookstore and the political forums will be tools to arm workers in struggle in the whole region."

The main speaker at the event, which also aimed to raise funds for the Pathfinder Fund, was Jack Willey, a staff writer for the Militant and previously a coal miner in southern Illinois. Willey explained that the war in Afghanistan is an imperialist war for political, economic, and military domination of the region, waged by finance capital. Drawing a comparison to the Roman empire, Willey said that U.S. president George Bush "says that this is a war against terrorists. The Roman Empire rationalized its invasion of foreign lands as an act to rid the world of barbarians. It exaggerated its contribution to culture to justify military domination. This is a war by Washington for oil and other resources, and to dominate the world markets.

"Like a drumbeat in the background," Willey said, "the U.S. rulers have a constant theme of the next place they want to attack. Their next target, like the ones they have previously attacked, will be an unstable regime in some area of the world where declining imperialism wants to advance its interests. But in the end, their brutal military occupations cause increased instability in the region, and a drain on the U.S. treasury. They will never be able to pull out of Bosnia, Iraq, or Afghanistan because in the decline of capitalism they cannot establish a stable ruling power."

Willey also described the government and employer assault on workers' rights in the United States, which so far has especially targeted immigrant workers. "They have rounded up more than 1,200 people, many of them Arabs and Muslims, and have held them in prisons to be questioned. For the first time, we are experiencing 'disappeared' people in this country. Many are being held in solitary confinement. Some are literally people who went to the store and never came back. Their stories are just beginning to come out," he said.

Willey ended his talk by describing the increasing resistance worldwide of working people fighting the impact of the deepening capitalist disorder. "These conditions will lead to a socialist revolution here in the United States," he said. "The rulers' accelerated attacks on working people will drive us to fight back." Willey pointed to hundreds of teachers on strike in Middletown, New Jersey, who were arrested for refusing to obey a court order to go back to work, as well as other strikes occurring in a time of war.

"In Palestine," he said, "no matter how many fighters are killed by the state of Israel, the capitalist rulers there cannot stop the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. These fighters are showing selflessness and dedication." This kind of repression, imperialist war, and assaults on working people is what the superwealthy rulers will repeatedly impose on humanity, he said, until a revolutionary leadership can be built that can chart a course to lead working people in their tens of millions out of these horrors. "We need to build a world communist movement capable of confronting the U.S. ruling class as well as Israeli military brutality, and open the road for the struggle for socialism. We need to organize to use Pathfinder books, which keep in print our common revolutionary heritage, as part of this fight to bring an end to these atrocities and brutalities."

As of the meeting, a total of $4,470 has been pledged to the Pathfinder Fund from this area. Participants pledged an additional $175 and contributed $1,360 that evening. The 13 people in attendance traveled from Boulder, Denver, and Rangely in Colorado, as well as Salt Lake City. The next day seven people attended a class on Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, a Pathfinder book authored by Jack Barnes.  
 
 
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