Hawkins, 26, had just returned from a month in Cuba with a team of socialist workers and YS members who helped run the Pathfinder Press booth at the Havana International Book Fair. She and others traveled to several cities after the fair to take part in presentations of Pathfinder's new book, From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution by Víctor Dreke, a leader of the revolution for more than four decades. (See articles page 8.)

Hawkins was also a YS delegate to the World Festival of Youth and Students in Algiers, Algeria, last summer. The YS leader is one of the illegally terminated workers at American Meat Packing Corporation and a participant in the workers' struggle for severance pay and other benefits owed them when the packing house shut down.

"We go to Cuba to learn the hard-fought lessons of that revolution in order to better join the fight to make a revolution in the United States," Hawkins said. "We have two choices. One is the road carved out by the Cuban Revolution, based on solidarity and the struggle to place human needs first. The other is capitalism, a decaying system which offers nothing but unemployment, racism, war, and the threat of fascism."

Hawkins explained the case of the five Cuban revolutionaries who were framed up by the U.S. government and are now in jail on sentences ranging from 15 years to a double life term. In taking on the assignment of gathering information on the activities of counterrevolutionary organizations in the United States with a history of violent attacks on Cuba, "the five were defending the sovereignty of Cuba and their revolution," she said.  
 
'Agree about making a revolution'
The discussion period at each meeting involved a lively exchange about the revolutionary perspectives of the YS.

"I agree that we need to make a revolution," said Nimo Farh, a Roosevelt High School student and leader of the Somali Student Association. "But the government tries to intimidate us through cop killings and deportations." Farh was one of the high school students who held a meeting with Hawkins at a local McDonald's after their school administrators refused to allow them to organize the event at Roosevelt. The students had participated in the recent protests against the police murder of Somali working-class youth Kassim Jeilani in Minneapolis.

"The U.S. lets us into the country," stated Farh, "but if we speak up about injustice, we get deported or shot." Other young Somali students related personal experiences of harassment and jail time at the hands of the Minneapolis police.

The students had described the role the cops play in a capitalist society, said Hawkins. The police are organized to protect the interest of the ruling class and to intimidate workers and people who speak out and act against the capitalist system.

Standing up and mobilizing as many people as possible to demand the prosecution of the killer cops, she said, puts the police and city government on notice that such brutality will not go unanswered. At the end of their two-hour meeting, all the Somali students signed up for more information on the YS.

At Normandale Community College student Douglas Belton asked: "What is the alternative to an industrial capitalist society?"

"Industry is not the problem," said Hawkins, "but what capitalism does with it. When capitalism first appeared it moved humanity forward by abolishing the feudal system. Now it is no longer progressive. Technology under capitalism is used against working people around the world. Capitalism holds back our capacity to meet human needs, violates workers' rights, and causes war, racism, and underdevelopment."

At Minneapolis Community and Technical College a Russian-born student related his parents' experiences under the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia, and asked: "Would you justify the murder of middle-class people by workers who are oppressed as they are on their way to overthrow the government?"

"The working-class movement is not the source of violence," Hawkins said. "But we are not going to let this system take us down with it and we are for the right to self-defense. If you study history, you will see that every ruling class in the world has used violence against the oppressed to maintain their power. We live under the dictatorship of the capitalist class. It is the most powerful and brutal ruling class that the world has ever known, and we will have to defend ourselves. The stronger and bigger our movement is, the more we will be able to minimize the casualties inflicted by the capitalists and their repressive forces." Other students joined the discussion to back up Hawkins' point of view.

Karen Ray is a garment worker and Francisco Picado is a meat packer in St. Paul.  
 
 
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