BY BRIAN TAYLOR
Dean Cook, one of the oil workers fighting a lockout by
Crown Central Petroleum, and others in the Houston area are
revving up their engines to begin a two-and-a-half-day
caravan to Oberlin, Ohio - the location of the August 5-8
Active Workers Conference. "A couple catfish workers in
Belzoni, Mississippi, are making plans and working things out
to go," Cook told the Militant. Catfish workers - most of
them women who are Black - have been in a fight for many
months to demand an end to miserable working conditions and
discriminatory treatment. "They are doing some fund-raising
this weekend" to cover the costs of the trip, Cook said.
A student from Guatemala is also planning to join the caravan. "His first link to us was through Perspectiva Mundial," the Spanish-language sister magazine to the Militant, said Laura Garza, a Steelworker and member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee in Houston.
He was referred to the magazine on the Internet. "He wrote to Perspectiva asking if he could subscribe and be hooked up with like-minded people in his area. They directed him to the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists in Houston."
The student wrote to socialists in Houston, who invited him to a recent educational weekend with a theme of celebrating the 40th anniversary of the victory of the Cuban revolution. He took a five-hour bus ride from Lafayette, Louisiana, to participate.
That caravan from Texas will also meet up with conference participants driving up from Birmingham, Alabama.
Socialist workers and young socialists in Birmingham are making use of the last several days before the conference to ensure that every Young Socialists member and interested youth attend. As part of this, YS members in Birmingham have organized a class with a few students at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, on "A Sea Change in Working-Class Politics" the opening section of Capitalism's World Disorder.
Socialist workers on the East Coast have continued to anchor teams with co-workers and Young Socialists to visit and talk with Steelworkers in the Newport News shipyards. Mary Martin, a member of the International Association of Machinists, reports a striker and his wife - both Militant readers - in the course of discussing politics and the conference, referred them to a fight at Newport News, Inc., a small warehouse that processes mail orders. Workers there have been trying to organize into a union. Three of them bought copies of the Militant.
Some 14 shipyard workers bought the paper during a two-day solidarity trip of workers from New Jersey and Washington, D.C. A young Navy sailor after seeing the "Stop U.S. gov't strikebreaking!" headline expressed his solidarity with the strikers and laid down $1.50 for a copy. As part of the trip they also visited a meatpacking plant in Smithfield where one worker recently died on the job from heat stroke. Sixteen workers there bought the Militant at the factory gate during a morning shift change.
Supporters in Michigan are helping plan two caravans. The possibilities for the first caravan began to materialize earlier in the year "with a worker we got to know again while doing solidarity with poultry workers on strike against Tyson in Indiana," wrote Chris Hoeppner in a note to the Militant.
"This United Food and Commercial Workers member, a longtime reader of the Militant who was quite active in the strike, invited us down last week to a protest against a cop killing of a Black person in Louisville.... We've been able to have a couple of discussions with him and a co-worker of his on Capitalism's World Disorder." That caravan will start in the coal mining region west of Louisville, and also swing up to Cincinnati to pick up a few supporters of the Socialist Workers Party, "and then it's on to Oberlin."
"The second caravan," writes Hoeppner, will begin with an auto worker "who participated in the educational weekend in Detroit this past week where we focused on The Changing Face of U.S. Politics by Jack Barnes and Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution" by Leon Trotsky. "Another leg of this caravan will come in from Flint, Michigan, with a worker from a stamping plant who recently participated in a week-long team to Newport News, Virginia," as part of being a regular participant in the socialist summer school. They will come through Detroit to join a number of conference goers, then stop in Toledo, Ohio, to pick up a jeep factory worker.
In Chicago efforts are being made to encourage every organized supporter of the SWP to come to the conference. So far of the 18 supporters there, 10 are definitely going. Two more are trying to work out final kinks in their plans. SWP branches across the United States have been holding meetings with nationally organized party supporters to maximize participation at the Ohio gathering.
Socialist summer school classes have been fertile ground to win people to attending the conference. One student leader at DePaul University, who ran into socialist workers during protests against the U.S. government assault on Yugoslavia, has attended almost every class and has given one of them on a section of Capitalism's World Disorder. She is going to the Active Workers Conference.
Socialist workers in Atlanta will join a couple of farmers in Georgia they have worked with over the past year, as well as a couple of young workers who are planning to drive to the northern Ohio event.
In St. Louis, one airline worker at TWA says he wants to attend the Active Workers Conference. He has been a part of two classes on Capitalism's World Disorder, which he hosted at his house.
Panels reflect party's advances
The conference will open with a panel discussion "that
will reflect some of the most recent things vanguard workers
have been focusing on in the class struggle," explained
Norton Sandler, one of the conference organizers and a member
of the SWP's Trade Union Committee. "This includes work
around the strike in the Tidewater area of Virginia where
United Steelworkers of America Local 8888 members will vote
on a contract July 30. One of the panelists will speak about
mixing it up with these strikers over the last week in
Newport News and a nearby farm area in North Carolina."
"Another panelist," Sandler continued, "will describe what it was like to be on a bus with Kaiser workers from Ohio to Virginia, discussing what's going on in the working-class movement in a concentrated way over a couple of days.
"One of the most important experiences to get across in the panel is the campaign to sell Capitalism's World Disorder. Hundreds of copies have been sold since it was printed earlier this year. A panelist will explain how valuable the book has been in discussing world politics with workers and farmers."
The SWP/YS-organized summer schools that have taken place across the country will have a place in the panel, Sandler said. "The Young Socialists deployed their forces in three regional centers: Birmingham/Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles/Bay Area. Some YS members went to these regions just for the summer. They got their first jobs in industry, largely at meatpacking and garment and textile factories.
"They studied the history of the communist movement, Capitalism's World Disorder, while they joined class-struggle activities taking place from textile mills in Kannapolis, North Carolina, to Newport News.
"The panel will also bring up to date progress made around the SWP financial campaigns launched at the June 1 National Committee meeting in Chicago. Nearly half of the SWP branches have decided to move into smaller headquarters that better fit the local unit's size and resources. The Miami and Des Moines branches will have already moved by the time of the Active Workers Conference."
"The final piece," according to Sandler, "will introduce the irreplaceable work of the party's supporters, beginning with the campaign they are leading to increase their monthly contributions to the party from a total of nearly $140,000 a year to $170,000."
The first day and a half of the conference are devoted to the first two panels and to talks by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, and New International editor Mary-Alice Waters. Their talks will generalize and draw out the political conclusions of some of the experience described in the panel discussions.
Classes based on Marxist theory
Then, the agenda will turn to classes that will add to
these discussions by concentrating on Marxist theory and the
generalized experience of the working class over the past 150
years. The classes are built around unwinding, reformulating,
and answering some of the central questions that came out of
the socialist summer schools. One such question a YS member
asked during a class by veteran SWP member Tom Leonard in
Santa Cruz, California, was: "Why do party members always
pose broader issues of world politics and social struggles to
co-workers in their work in the unions, not just focus on
trade union tactics?" A class during the conference will seek
to answer this, drawing on the pamphlet What is to be Done?
by Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, among other readings.
Another question from the Santa Cruz class that will be addressed is, "Why did the SWP return to calling for a workers and farmers government in the early 1980s, a position it had stepped back from in the previous two decades in favor of calling for a `workers government'?"
The class entitled "Russian revolution: birth of the worker-bolshevik," will draw on History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky to answer the question "what is a worker-bolshevik?" asked during a summer school session in Los Angeles. Some other working titles for classes at the conference include, "Rights of nations to self-determination: a Marxist application from Quebec to Puerto Rico to Kosova," and "Struggle for a proletarian party and organizational principles of the SWP."
All out for `Red Week' in New York
A number of Young Socialists members, interested youth,
and workers of all ages are making plans to go straight from
the Active Workers Conference to New York for the August 9-15
"Red Week" project to paint and make other improvements at
the Pathfinder Building. That's where Pathfinder books, as
well as the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, are edited and
printed. At least a dozen young socialists will join in the
week-long project, and more volunteers are needed.
Many members and supporters of the communist movement from the northeastern region will turn out for this project in New York, especially on the final weekend. As part of the week, SWP branches in New York and New Jersey are planning a class and video showing by Mámud Shirvani on Wednesday, August 11, taking up the history of the 1920 Baku Congress and the role of the Bolsheviks in Central Asia during that time. That Friday, supporters in the New York area will hold a Militant Labor Forum with a panel discussion on the Irish freedom struggle. On Saturday, August 14, supporters of the communist movement will relax and celebrate the week's accomplishments with a dance party.