Fruit's campaign was mentioned in a front-page article in the August 31 Des Moines Register, which listed the candidates who will be on the October 9 primary ballot. "Though council elections are nonpartisan, Fruit wants to share a Socialist outlook for the city," said the Register article. "The production worker in Perry's IBP meatpacking plant has said excessive police force, a lack of support for labor, insufficient women's rights, and big government threaten the city."

Campaign supporters reported the attack to the police, and faxed a news release to the local media. The Register interviewed Fruit over the phone about the attack and ran an article on the incident in its September 3 issue.

Fruit issued a statement saying his campaign will not be intimidated from speaking out on questions crucial to workers and farmers and encouraged supporters of democratic rights to speak out in defense of freedom of expression. "We will continue to explain our perspectives to working people and farmers starting with the Labor Day Parade today," the socialist meat packer said. "We will explain that the capitalist system is continuing in the direction of war and economic depression; that the only solution is for workers and farmers to break from the Democratic and Republican parties and unite to form their own government in their own interests."

Fruit, a member of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1149, and his supporters marched in the parade alongside a pickup truck driven by Larry Ginter, a farmer from Rhodes, Iowa.

Some 1,000 unionists took part in the parade, including a good-sized contingent of members of the United Steelworkers of America who have been on strike against Titan Tire since May 1, 1998. Recent reports in the local media have said that a settlement is near in the strike.

Several strikers told campaign supporters they were going to stick with the strike however the negotiations turn out. Many have found other jobs, including at the Des Moines Firestone plant. One striker, asked if he would leave his job there to return to Titan, said he would even though it would mean a cut in pay. "Five years down the road there needs to be people in that plant who can look at Morrie Taylor and say 'you didn't beat us,'" he said.

Socialist campaigners passed out brochures to hundreds of workers and their families who lined the parade route. Fourteen copies of the Militant and three copies of Perspectiva Mundial were sold along the parade route, and a literature table was set up at the start and end of the parade.

Kevin Dwire is a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1149 at Swift in Marshalltown, Iowa.
 
 
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