Celebrating the March 17 grand opening of the SWP office and Pathfinder Bookstore were speakers from various struggles in the area. Tony Jeanthenor, from the Haitian rights group Veye-Yo, recalled two decades of working with the Socialist Workers Party. "The SWP workers were at every action we had for Haitian rights," he said. He also recalled joining with the socialists on the picket line in the Eastern Airlines and UPS strikes.

Cindy Jaquith, who recently traveled to Cuba to cover the Havana Book Fair for the Militant, told the audience that the socialists first established an office in Miami in the 1970s. At that time counterrevolutionary Cuban terrorist groups openly used violence to intimidate supporters of the Cuban revolution as well as other fighters for social justice in the city. In 1979 right-wing Cubans made a bomb threat against the socialists' headquarters and bookstore.

For years after that, the headquarters was located in Little Haiti. "We were welcomed by the Haitian community," she said, "which was important given the campaign to silence any working-class voice in the city."

Jaquith explained that the move to North Miami is in response to the interest working people there have expressed in communist literature, ranging from subscriptions to the Militant to books and pamphlets by Pathfinder Press. For the last three months socialists have regularly put up a table in front of a major supermarket near their new headquarters. Almost without exception, a book or pamphlet is sold every time the table goes up.

Karl Butts, a farmer from Plant City, Florida, gave greetings to the celebration from the Tampa SWP Organizing Committee. Butts explained that he was won to the communist movement "through the work the SWP is doing with farmers and bringing us into contact with workers." Butts participated along with other working farmers in a trip to Cuba last year to learn about farming in that country. He said the most fundamental thing he learned was that "in Cuba, farmers are guaranteed the right to farm."

Greetings were sent to the meeting from Irving Forrestier of the National Boricua Human Rights Network in Orlando, Florida. "Throughout the years," Forres----tier's message said, "the peoples in struggle have counted on the Party and the bookstores for solidarity, truth in information, and support."

Hector Castillo, a Cuban-American active in the Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Embargo of Cuba, also spoke. He had attended the New York launching of Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs--Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas the week before. "I urge all of you to get a copy of this book," Castillo told the audience. "It's especially important for the American people to read this, to learn how they were misinformed."

Chairing the meeting was Eric Simpson, a Miami meat packer who designed the cover of Playa Girón. A fund appeal to purchase computer manuals for Simpson's ongoing volunteer design work for Pathfinder, and to help cover the cost of Jaquith's trip to Cuba, netted $120.  
 
 
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