BY GREG McCARTAN

MINNEAPOLIS - "This will be the most important political meeting of the campaign," said James Harris, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president, at a meeting held here April 6 during the Young Socialists convention. He spoke and answered questions together with vice presidential candidate Laura Garza. Some 175 workers and young revolutionaries came to the public event, hosted by the Young Socialists.

"We want your endorsement, which means your active political support," Harris told the Young Socialists. "We want you to be engaged with the Socialist Workers Party in political activity in the fight for socialism across this country and around the world. We want to go to strikes, rallies, and picket lines together; we want to protest the ultrarightist course represented by Patrick Buchanan, the war preparations by Washington, and the U.S. threats and economic war against Cuba."

The socialist campaign "is the only campaign that has answers and a program for working people," Harris said. "For bigger sections of the population the world we face seems more bleak every day. You get downsized or forced to speed up on the job. Reports that there has been a gain in employment the past two months send the bond and stock markets into a tailspin. This all feeds into the polarization that exists in society."

Millions feel a deeper and deeper distrust for the capitalist system, something right-wing, fascist-type groups feed on to try to attract people to their banner. "As people become more and more disenchanted with politics as it is in the United States, these rightists provide reactionary answers that reinforce divisions within the working class," Harris said.

"But this also means that people are more and more open to taking on radical political conclusions to what they see operating in the world today," he said. "Which means that there is room for socialists to reach out with our explanations as to what is happening in the world."

The communist campaign "gives scientific answers," Harris stated. "When you hear people complain that there are too many Mexican immigrants, give them a scientific answer: `The more the merrier.'

"Immigrant workers strengthen our class, by bringing their experiences into the working class in every part of the country. That's why Mexicans are a problem for the bosses, not for us. That's a scientific, in-your-face answer."

Give scientific answers
The presidential candidate continued, "When the Palestinians, or Irish, or Cubans stand up and fight against national oppression or provocations by imperialism, the liberals will say, `I wish they'd done it a different way.' You should say, `You should rejoice - the world would be a far worse place if they stopped fighting.' That's a scientific answer."

The central demands of the socialist campaign, Garza said in her presentation, "are ones that unify workers. We raise the need for the labor movement internationally to demand, `Jobs for all!' in order to combat the devastating consequences of the world capitalist crisis." The candidate said such a fight would be a social battle, that would also include demands to defend and extend affirmative action in employment, housing, and education; raise the minimum wage; and establish full cost-of-living escalators in wages, social security, and unemployment compensation.

Garza said the employers and their government are targeting "the social protections, the social wage, and the rights we have won over decades," including social security, Medicare, unemployment compensation, and other such entitlements.

"Today there is a massive offensive to take that back, to make working people pay for the crisis of the capitalist system," Garza said. "To succeed in further attacks on us they have to divide us, to coarsen relations between workers. One of the ways they do that is to scapegoat immigrant workers. But the rulers' greatest fear - that we're not across the border waiting to come in but that we are already here in our millions and we're not going anywhere - has become a reality.

"When Buchanan talks about building a wall between the United States and Mexico, when Clinton talks about `immigration control,' they aren't aiming mainly at stemming the number of immigrants coming into the country," Garza said. "They want you to get used to the methods of thuggery you saw on the highway in California being used against more working people here in the United States. When the ruling- class politicians talk about `taking back the country' they mean taking back what our class has won."

Reject the `lesser evil' train
Garza raised with the young socialists that "a `lesser evil' train is going to get rolling in the United States as the elections heat up. They will try to convince you that Robert Dole, Newt Gingrich, and the Republicans will do so much damage to working people that you should vote for William Clinton instead - even if you don't really support him."

As Garza spoke, other forces that call themselves socialist were jumping on the train. An editorial in the April 6 issue of the People's Weekly World, the paper of the Communist Party USA, denounced Ralph Nader's Green Party election campaign, warning that "if Nader takes enough votes from Clinton, Bob Dole could win" in California. "The AFL-CIO is so concerned they have put aside their differences with Clinton and given him an early endorsement....This is the true path of political independence," the World stated.

"Instead of supporting a lesser evil we need to organize and fight along the line James Harris talked about, independent of all the parties that accept or defend capitalism," Garza said. Providing a working-class voice also means doing something Nader and other procapitalist candidates won't do - rejecting defense of "our nation," which ultimately always means siding with American bosses, she said.

Instead Garza pointed to revolutionary Cuba as an example of the solution working people and fighting youth the world over should fight for. "Working people there built revolutionary organizations, took political power away from the bosses and landlords, did away with capitalism, and run society in the interests of the vast majority," she said. "We should do the same thing here."

Following Garza's presentation, Verónica Poses, a leader of the Young Socialists from Miami, reported to the meeting on the march and rally earlier that day in Los Angeles to protest the police brutality against two workers who are immigrants. During the question period, several Young Socialists spoke about fights they had participated in, such as supporting striking public workers in Ontario and fighting for the right of high school students in Utah to have gay rights and other clubs.

Attending the campaign meeting, in addition to delegates and guests at the YS convention, were working people from the region. Four meatpackers from Perry, Iowa, originally from Guatemala and Portugal, drove up, for instance.

In her talk, Garza pointed to one of the fighters in the audience, Roxanne Gould from Sioux City, Iowa. Gould has been active in fighting against the killing of a Native American woman by the cops there. "We pledge to use our campaign to join in and build support for fights like hers all over the world," Garza stated.

Those attending the meeting donated $1,130 to help with immediate campaign expenses, and pledged an additional $1,580. This will serve to kick off a $90,000 fund to finance the presidential campaign.  
 
 
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