Róger Calero, who just defeated a U.S. government effort to deport him, spoke about the first leg of his “Fight to Win, Sí Se Puede” national tour. “The victory came about not through a particular set of tactics, but through the activity of working-class campaigners with a rich history in struggle,” he said. John Studer, executive director of the Political Rights Defense Fund (PRDF) and coordinator of Calero’s defense committee, said that the second leg of Calero’s tour will take him to New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The defense committee will wrap up the campaign with all bills paid in full, he said. Any surplus will be donated to the PRDF “to be ready for the next fight.”

Young Socialist Olympia Newton from Los Angeles reported on the July 24-31 Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange. The trip will involve more than 250 young people from across the United States. Newton noted that participants have prepared by studying documents of the Cuban Revolution like The Second Declaration of Havana and Marianas in Combat: Teté Puebla and the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon in Cuba’s Revolutionary War, 1956-58.

“We regret that due to obstacles beyond our control we cannot accompany you,” said a message to the rally by the Socialist Revolutionary Nucleus of Paraguay. “But we want to make sure that our voice is present, even from afar, given that in junctures such as the present one—a juncture where imperialism brazenly unleashes a whirlwind of wars with force and violence against all the peoples of the world—only two roads are open: ‘socialism or savagery.’

“We, like you, compañeros, choose the first, the working-class road, that of revolution for socialism.”

Pete Williamson, a leader of the Communist League in the United Kingdom, described the progress made over the last year in building the organization’s Scotland organizing committee. League members are now working alongside 1,000 other workers in a cut-and-kill meatpacking plant, he said, and have been involved in struggles of dairy farmers. They have been confronted with the particular forms the class struggle takes in Scotland, he said. “Scotland is an oppressed nation. People there identify their country as Scotland, not Britain.”

James Harris and Maggie Trowe, Socialist Workers candidates for president and vice president, respectively, in the 2000 elections, chaired the rally. Speakers they introduced included Martín Koppel, editor of Perspectiva Mundial, and Arrin Hawkins, a leader of the Young Socialists. Trowe led the cheering crowd at the end in a spirited collection of pledges and contributions.

Over the next weeks SWP branches and organizing committees will help initiate public meetings for the newly launched party-building fund. As socialist workers reach out to other workers and young fighters through their activity, they will also be seeking new contributors. Donations can be sent to the Socialist Workers Party at 152 W. 36th St., Room 401, New York, NY 10018, with checks made out to the SWP.  
 
 
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