BY JEFF JONES
Minneapolis - Supporters of the Minnesota Socialist Workers campaign rallied here May 1 to announce the party's candidates for governor and U.S. Congress. Heading the socialist ticket is gubernatorial candidate Tom Fiske.

Tony Lane, a worker at Northwest Airlines and member of International Association of Machinists (IAM), chaired the rally. Lane described some of the actions he and his co- workers around the country have taken to press for a contract after 19 months of fruitless negotiations.

This increased combativity, Lane pointed out, has resulted in increased discussion on the job on a broad range of political questions. That is what stood behind the success campaign supporters experienced earlier that afternoon, said Lane, selling 21 copies of the Militant to Northwest workers at the plant gate.

Michael Pennock, a member of Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Local 6-418 and Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Congress in the fifth district, told the audience, "Our campaign stands 100 percent with the Minneapolis Black community and its supporters in protests against police brutality in this city." Pennock pointed to the victory earlier this year when a campaign of protest meetings and a successful march on Martin Luther King Day compelled Hennepin County prosecutor and gubernatorial candidate Michael Freeman to drop charges against Lawrence Miles Jr., a victim of a police shooting.

Pennock, who has participated in actions supporting an NAACP lawsuit against the state of Minnesota calling for an end to de facto segregation in Minneapolis schools, pointed to the campaign against cop brutality as an example of the type of political action needed to defend Black rights. Pennock urged participation in a May 16 NAACP-sponsored march for school desegregation.

Tom Fiske, a member of the IAM Local 1037 and Socialist Workers candidate for governor, was the rally's featured speaker. Fiske highlighted the "sea change" occurring in the ranks of the working class internationally. The new mood of combativity so evident among Northwest unionists is part of a more general trend among workers, said Fiske. "This resistance [of the Northwest workers] is the product of workers' experiences, a new sense of solidarity created through overcoming divisions and watching other workers win.

"These fights, such as that of the Caterpillar workers, the broad working-class resistance in France, the Australian dock workers' strike, the general strike in Denmark, the Case workers' contract rejection, and the Titan rubber workers' strike, help workers begin to see the class reality and the possibilities for the labor movement taking on broader social issues," Fiske explained.

Taking on such social questions and defending the existence of trade unions is totally intertwined, said Fiske, pointing to the example of the fight for immigrant workers' rights and the fight to organize strawberry workers in California.

The ruling-class assault on working people and their unions, said Fiske, is part of its drive toward war abroad. To go to war, the capitalist rulers will need to housebreak the unions and muzzle critics of its war drive. "The biggest prize in their drive toward war...remains the goal of grabbing and overturning the workers states in Eastern Europe and Russia," Fiske explained. "The rulers' debate on NATO expansion revolves around how best to tackle directly the progressive social relations established in these countries."

Fiske said that the Socialist Workers campaign is going wherever there's working- class resistance: a demonstration for Puerto Rican independence, strike picket lines, and meetings against the U.S. embargo of Cuba.

The final speaker of the evening was Gaetan Whiston, a member of the United Steelworkers of American and a leader of the Young Socialists. Whiston pledged the support of the revolutionary youth organization for the campaign and made an appeal for funds to get the campaign started, which netted $770 in pledges and contributions.

Joining Fiske and Pennock as part of the Minnesota slate are John Hawkins, candidate for lieutenant governor, and Heather Wood, candidate for U.S. Congress in the fourth congressional district. Both are members of United Steelworkers of America Local 7263 at North Star Steel.  
 
 
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