BY KEVIN DWIRE
CLEVELAND - Militant supporters from Cleveland and Cincinnati sold 13 copies of the paper at a strike authorization vote for United Auto Workers Local 696 at the General Motors Delphi brake plants in Dayton, Ohio, June 30. The sales team was one of many activities by socialists in this area to build the July 11-12 Active Workers Conference in Pittsburgh.

The auto workers in Dayton approved the strike authorization.

"So many workers showed up they couldn't all get into the union hall," reported Brad Downs, a laid-off GM worker at the Parma stamping plant in Cleveland. Downs said that several workers were angry about a report that GM will lay off at the plant despite agreements not to reduce the workforce.

Cincinnati Militant supporter Bobbi Sack said that one young woman who bought a paper on her way into the vote liked the coverage on the Cuban revolution. A day earlier Cincinnati supporters sold 11 copies of the Militant to Teamsters at UPS.

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer reported June 24 that a handbill distributed at the Dayton plants by the union said that GM is outsourcing work to subcontractors, and that the company proposed reducing the workforce from 3,300 to 1,520 by the end of 1999. The Plain-Dealer reported that Local 696 president Gary Hill said that a strike would not happen until the Flint strikes are settled.

On June 27 Young Socialist leader Sarah Katz spoke to a meeting on the Antioch College campus in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The meeting was put together by a YS supporter from Chicago who goes to school there. Eleven people came to the meeting, including a professor and his son, who is a high school student. Katz, who is a garment worker and a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees Local 69 in Chicago, said that students at Antioch were already planning to rent two vans to go to the July 25 march in Washington, D.C., to support independence for Puerto Rico and demand the release of Puerto Rican political prisoners. And four students said they are interested in the Pittsburgh conference.

Katz said she gave a short talk on the accelerating working-class resistance, pointing to the UAW strikes against GM in Flint, Michigan, and the United Steelworkers of America strike in Des Moines, Iowa, against Titan Tire. "People had a variety of political views," she said, "and we had a completely civil and rich discussion on how do you make social change. The discussion ranged from protecting `U.S. jobs' to how socialists see the world today and the changes that are happening in Indonesia and Kosova."

Participants bought two copies of the Militant and two Pathfinder titles, Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women, and The Eastern Airlines Strike.

With the conference fast approaching, socialist workers need to take advantage of every opportunity to reach out to students, youth, and workers about the event. The panel discussion on taking communist ideas to today's working- class struggles and building a party structured to carry out mass work will be attractive to working people and youth who are looking for others who are serious about fighting against the conditions that capitalism is forcing on workers and farmers around the world.

Fund-raising for scholarships can assure that those who need financial help will be able to attend. The $95 registration fee for the two-day conference includes the cost of four catered meals (see ad on page 5)

LOS ANGELES - Workers who have been involved in different struggles in Los Angeles continue to read the Militant. A sales team returned to the Pacific Maritime Association offices in Long Beach on June 26 and sold 51 Militants to longshore workers. Workers were most interested in the ongoing coverage of the GM strikes, but there was also interest in the Militant's article on political developments in Australia.

Dock workers here had earlier refused to unload a ship from Australia loaded by strikebreakers. More than 250 Militants have been sold to Los Angeles-area longshore workers in the last two months.

Another team visited the picketline in Irvine at Rockwell's semiconductor plant, which has been on strike for more than a month now. Referring to the fact that the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has no strike fund, Polly Chea, a young woman from Cambodia who had fled after the Pol Pot regime forcibly evacuated the cities, said, "We've been through much worse. We can deal with this. We're going to stay out until this is done. We want to be treated as humans, not robots."

Another sales team returned to the Northwest Airlines reservation center, where workers who are members of the International Association of Machinists bought 15 papers.

A team to the Anheuser Busch brewery in Van Nuys discovered that there was a union meeting the next day to discuss a new company proposal. The first offer was voted down in May. Teamsters have been working without a contract since then. Many of the workers expressed the feeling that they should have gone on strike when the first proposal was voted down. Seven Teamsters bought the Militant because of the GM strike coverage.

NEW YORK - Two Militant supporters headed out to a hotel near JFK airport on June 28 to talk to members of the International Association of Machinists attending a "Town Hall" meeting called by IAM president Tom Buffenbarger.

Most of the workers who spoke to us on their way into the meeting were airline workers and many were angry and in a fighting mood. We got an enthusiastic response to the socialist newspaper as we shared information and experiences and talked about the increased resistance of workers from Flint to Puerto Rico. Ten of the 30 workers attending the meeting bought the Militant, and we got out a lot of leaflets for the Socialist Workers campaign and about the Active Workers Conference in Pittsburgh.

Two cab drivers who have been involved in the fight against the city government's attack on their conditions of work got the Militant and directed us to the cab dispatching lot nearby. There we continued the discussions and eight more drivers bought the paper.

DETROIT - Aided by two workers from the print shop in New York where the Militant is printed, Priscilla Schenk and Ryan Kelly, campaigners here had a successful last weekend of June reaching out to workers in the region.

On Saturday, after a short huddle, four supporters headed for Flint, the epicenter of the fight against GM. After visiting UAW Local 651's hall the socialist workers went out to the picket lines. Among the pickets were a group of nine members of UAW Local 686 from Medina, New York. One of them, David Smith, said that they came to Flint "to show some solidarity with our brothers and sisters out here on the line."

The team went to a shopping mall where 20 workers bought the Militant in about an hour. The next day another 15 workers bought the paper at the airport and another shopping area. A large majority of working people expressed their support for the fight by the UAW against the auto giant.  
 
 
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