Fret is a 21-year-old member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) and chairperson of the New York Young Socialists. He was speaking at a September 25 televised debate sponsored by the Campaign Finance Board. Also participating were incumbent Mark Green, a Democrat, and Jules Polonetsky, a Democratic Assemblyman who was picked by Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to run on the Republican and Liberal Party lines. Wendy Lyons, the Socialist Workers candidate for comptroller in New York, was also part of a September 29 debate with the incumbent, Democrat Alan Hevesi, and Genevieve Torres of the Independence Party. Both debates were carried live on New York One cable television and WNYC radio station. The mayoral debate, which will include Republican incumbent Rudolph Guiliani, Democrat Ruth Messinger, and Socialist Workers candidate Olga Rodríguez will take place October 9.
In an interview, Lyons, also a member of UNITE, described the response of co-workers at Lord West, the garment factory she works in.
"The debate sparked a huge discussion" among the largely immigrant workforce, explained Lyons. "Half the workers in the plant had watched it, including many who don't understand English well. Some said they translated into Spanish for family members. People I had never met came up to me and told me they liked what I had to say. Many expressed pride that a worker like themselves was speaking out in defense of workers' rights."
The debate took place on the eve of the new immigration provisions going into effect. Lyons told coworkers she was going to be on TV and elicited ideas on points to make in defense of immigrant rights.
After the debate, many workers responded favorably to the points she made about overcoming divisions among workers and the examples of the recent UPS and Bay Area Rapid Transit strikes.
Police brutality has been a big issue in the plant. At the beginning of the year a neighbor of some Lord West workers, Librado Sánchez, was killed by cops, and many participated in protests organized by the Sánchez family. Both Lyons and Fret spoke of the need for protests against cop brutality, instead of reliance on Democratic and Republican Party politicians.
Some workers in Lyons's plant had supported Democratic Party candidate for mayor Alfred Sharpton in the primaries because of his participation in recent mobilizations against the brutalization of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima by the cops. Lyons explained in the debate that while Sharpton and the Democratic Party offered no solution to the crisis facing working people, she defended his right to be in a run- off election with Messinger, who was declared the "winner" in the primary after a week-long recount of the ballots found her to have won by less than one percentage point.
Not all workers at the plant agreed with the socialist candidate. "There was quite a debate at the lunch table over welfare, with some saying `welfare cheats' are a big problem we face," said Lyons, "I pointed out how workers on welfare were scapegoated in order to keep us divided so we wouldn't fight the real enemy - the capitalists. Many workers saw the analogy with how the boss keeps us divided in the plant with a two-tier wage scale where newer workers make substantially less money than workers who have been there many years."
Since the debate, sales of Perspectiva Mundial and the Militant have been brisk. After the Public Advocate debate a young woman who had been assigned by her college professor to attend bought a subscription to the Militant and asked for more information on the Young Socialists.