A couple of dozen workers on break from cleaning and loading planes for Northwest Airlines spoke to Harris. Several approached with their questions ready. "I just want to know one thing: do you think you're going to win?" asked one. "Do you think the U.S. hostility against Cuba is going to end?" and "How can we go to Cuba to see the situation for ourselves?" asked others.

Harris, who had just returned from attending the conference of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers, answered these questions and shared his experiences. "You learn from the Cuban revolution that workers can run society," he stated. "It is a country where the welfare of working people is placed first."

At a public talk held May 18, Harris expounded on the main themes of his campaign. "The socialist alternative in this campaign is a working-class alternative to capitalist politics in this country and the world today," he stated. "We're out to build a political movement of intelligent, fighting workers who can discuss, lead, and organize themselves to take political power."

Pointing to the recent resignation of Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole from the Senate, Harris stated, "Dole resigned because the so-called Republican revolution, which was to be carried out in 100 days, was a complete failure." As cutbacks in various social programs were imposed, it met more resistance from working people. "Dole departed as a way of getting away from this. But he has nothing fundamentally different to say than what Clinton is saying."

Two signed up to join the Young Socialists for Harris and Garza. An appeal for funds netted $350 in contributions.

The socialist presidential candidate also received a friendly response from activists attending the march here demanding freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal May 20.

Campaign supporters distributed a statement issued by Harris and Garza demanding, "Free Mumia Abu-Jamal." It pointed out, "The cops, courts, prisons, and death rows are tools of the wealthy ruling class that have one purpose - to repress, divide, intimidate, and terrorize working people -to force them to accept their place in capitalist society with its inequalities and oppression."

Several days prior to Harris's arrival, socialist campaign supporters joined a protest of hundreds of people outside a public hearing called by the school board to discuss plans to close seven public schools in the district by the end of June.

A statement released by the local Socialist Workers candidates - Sam Manuel for delegate to the House, Mary Martin for U.S. Senate, and Brian Williams for City Council - was eagerly read by many in attendance. Headlined, "Education is a Right! Stop the School Closings and Cutbacks," it stated in part, "Under the guise of cutting the city's budget deficit, the ruling rich are attempting to dismantle the public school system.... By cutting jobs and funds for education and health care the financial control board and their masters in Congress are attempting to make working people pay for the profits crisis of the ruling rich." A couple of days later the board ratified the closures and plans to shut five others by June 1997. BY STEPHEN BLOODWORTH AND RAY PARSONS

CHICAGO - At a public meeting culminating Laura Garza's campaign tour here, a young campaign supporter asked the SWP vice presidential candidate, "What vested interest would a more highly paid union worker have in campaigning to raise the minimum wage?"

Garza responded that a fight for a livable wage is in the interests of all workers. Since wages are set from the bottom up, "with a low minimum wage, they want us to feel lucky when we get $6.00 per hour. A low minimum wage is used as a club against more highly paid workers who may strike-they must be greedy. And we are pressured to accept bad conditions on jobs we have, over the alternative of an unlivable minimum wage job."

This discussion on fighting for the unity of the working class prompted another young participant to ask why so many Mitsubishi auto workers attended a pro-company rally at the Chicago office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission April 22. The company is facing one of the largest class-action sexual harassment lawsuits ever filed in response to abuse suffered by women working at the automaker's plant in Normal, Illinois.

Kristin Meriam, Socialist Workers candidate for the 4th Congressional District in Illinois, spoke on the platform with Garza and took up this question.

"Workers were pressured by the company to attend, but it was a spirited rally," Meriam said. "The union needs to take up the cause of the women workers who filed the suit, and lead the fight for equality in the workplace. In the absence of this many auto workers there echoed the company's line that this suit jeopardized their jobs."

A message from Mark Curtis, a socialist and union activist awaiting parole from Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison, was read at the campaign meeting.

Garza's tour of Chicago included speaking at a class studying Chicana activism at DePaul University. Two young women who work at the Center for Latino Research there signed up for information on the U.S.-Cuba Youth Exchange trip to Cuba in July. Later campaign supporters took Garza to a picket protesting several recent cases of police brutality.

Three workers signed up for more information on the socialist campaign when seven supporters rallied with Garza at the Ford Torrence Assembly plant on Chicago's south side. Mark Curtis sends message

Below are excerpts of the message sent to the Socialist Workers campaign rally in Chicago from Mark Curtis on May 18, 1996.

Laura Garza and the Socialist Workers campaign reached into the Iowa State Penitentiary this week. A fellow prisoner and I were able to ask her by phone about her ideas. He and I will be getting together tomorrow to discuss the Militant article on her campaign....

When 1,300 Des Moines meatpackers are suddenly thrown out on the street, when 70 immigrant packers are deported from Storm Lake, Iowa, and when over 100 people are killed in a ValuJet plane crash all in the same week, we don't need Democratic or Republican "info-mercials" about family values or crime bills that butcher our democratic rights.

We need scientific explanations of the route to our emancipation as an international working class....

Every fighter will find in our election campaign and on Pathfinder's shelves irreplaceable lessons, history, and theory that, as they engage in struggle, will help to transform their thinking into that of a revolutionary politician and leader.

In addition to the boldness of our socialist ideas, my friend here was inspired at the audacity and confidence of a working- class Chicana running for vice president. This confidence is what is to be gained by joining the Socialist Workers campaign.

Mark Curtis

Fort Madison, Iowa  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home