BY CINDY JAQUITH
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - "Between now and the end of July,
socialists throughout the South are going back systematically
to deliver personal invitations to and help bring vanguard
workers, farmers, and young people to the Active Workers
Conference in Ohio -visiting catfish workers in Belzoni,
Steelworkers on strike against Titan Tire in Natchez,
Mississippi, farmers in Georgia, and others we've joined in
struggle," said Laura Garza. "We are organizing caravans for
the trip."
A member of the Steelworkers in Houston, Texas, Garza was chairing the concluding panel of a regional session of the socialist summer school here.
The panel featured a firsthand report on the recent textile union victory in North Carolina and was among the highlights of the three-day event here. Nearly 50 workers and youth from Atlanta, Birmingham, and Houston gathered July 3-5 to study politics, exchange experiences in the class struggle, and concretize plans for building the August 5-7 Active Workers Conference at Oberlin, Ohio, sponsored by the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialists (see ad on page 7).
Speaking on the July 4 panel, YS member Manuel Martínez described how workers at six Fieldcrest Cannon mills in Kannapolis, North Carolina, voted to join the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). "This is a historic victory for our class," Martínez said, "coming after a couple decades of struggle" (see front-page article).
Martínez is a student at the University of California in Santa Cruz. He moved to Atlanta after the end of the spring semester to take part in the socialist summer school there. He had just returned from Kannapolis along with other Militant reporters.
Young workers made a difference in the vote at Fieldcrest Cannon, Martínez said. "Young people are more susceptible to change. There are many workers in their late teens and early 20s in those mills." He also pointed to the increasing numbers and growing positive influence of immigrant workers. A larger percentage of the workforce in Kannapolis is now made up of toilers from Mexico, Central America, and several Asian countries. Several textile workers originally from Mexico told Militant reporters they applied lessons they learned from union battles in Mexico to the Kannapolis struggle.
This is a confirmation of the assessment of the communist movement on immigration, Martínez said. He pointed to a section from the chapter "So Far from God, So Close to Orange Country" of the book Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium by SWP national secretary Jack Barnes. "Communist workers welcome the internationalization of our class," that section says. "Crumbling borders weaken the employer-fostered competition between workers of different nationalities and widen the cultural scope and world view of the working class.... Workers recently arrived from `beyond the border' will make up a large and growing percentage of the cadres and leadership of the revolutionary party in every imperialist country."
Two classes on Capitalism's World Disorder, including one on "So Far from God," were held earlier that day.
Martínez and two socialist workers from Atlanta also visited Continental Tire strikers in Charlotte, near Kannapolis. "Morale on the picket lines was better because of the UNITE victory at Fieldcrest Cannon," Martínez said. "We joined Continental Steelworkers waving pink slips at scabs crossing the picket line." In Gainsville, Georgia, on their way to Atlanta, the socialists met a number of Mexican construction workers involved in a battle for union recognition. Mike Italie, who works in a UNITE-organized distribution center in Atlanta, and Jeanne FitzMaurice, a sewing machine operator at a union shop in Centerville, Alabama, also spoke on the panel.
SWP and YS members are organizing another team to southern textile towns July 12-17. They will sell the Militant, Perspectiva Mundial, and Capitalism's World Disorder at factory gates and working-class neighborhoods and get out the word about the Active Workers Conference. Those interested in participating can contact the Atlanta SWP and Young Socialists.
During the discussion, Robert Busch, another worker involved in a union organizing drive, spoke about the effort to win a majority to sign up with the United Auto Workers (UAW) at the nonunion Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama. The company has upped line speed from 135 to 190 cars per shift, resulting in a big jump in injuries. Workers there have no sick days and are subject to a great deal of forced overtime.
Union support is strongest on the assembly line, Busch said, while organizers of the antiunion campaign are concentrated in maintenance and other skilled trades. The majority of the workers are in their 20s and 30s. One third of the workforce of 1,200 have signed UAW cards so far. Dozens have joined the organizing committee, including a number of former coal miners with experience in the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). During a struggle like this, the need for a revolutionary party becomes more apparent, Busch said later.
A YS member in Birmingham spoke from the panel about the fighting traditions and important example UMWA miners have set over the past decades for the working class, using the recently reissued Pathfinder pamphlet Coal Miners on Strike. He also explained how a number of young workers are joining experienced miners and others in the area who are attending classes to get certification to work in the mines. Discussion about the UMWA and its record of militant struggle is frequent at the four-day mining class.
"Building fractions of socialist workers in coal, garment and textile, and meatpacking is at the center of the activity of the YS and SWP this summer," he said.
Young Socialists who have moved to Birmingham to attend the socialist summer school participate in weekly sales of the Militant and Pathfinder books and pamphlets at mine portals. The Atlanta and Birmingham SWP and Young Socialists are organizing joint portal sales in the region every other week. YS and party members are also planning follow-up trips to Auburn and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where a number of college and high school students have bought copies of Capitalism's World Disorder and may be interested in the Active Workers Conference.
The weekend was kicked off with a Militant Labor Forum by Argiris Malapanis, a member of the SWP National Committee who recently traveled to the Balkans as part of a Militant reporting team during the U.S.-led war against Yugoslavia.
Malapanis pointed to the rise in labor resistance in the United States since 1997 - as well as the renewed fight for Puerto Rican independence and actions by women in industry - and the efforts of socialist workers to fuse themselves with such struggles, transforming themselves in the process and maximizing the chances to recruit vanguard workers and youth to the proletarian party today. "Building the upcoming conference in Ohio," Malapanis said, "is a continuation of what began with the Active Workers Conference in Pittsburgh a year ago. The Active Workers Conference in August will be Pittsburgh II."
The three-day event concluded with a July 5 barbecue. More than $400 was raised - through a special collection and meals - to help finance the caravans to the Ohio gathering.
Argiris Malapanis contributed to this article.