"I agree with you--the Third World debt should be canceled," Sergio, a union painter, told Koppel after leafing through Perspectiva Mundial, the socialist campaign's magazine in Spanish, to which he subscribed. The worker, originally from Brazil and a member of District Council 9 of the painters union, told of his experiences backing the 1995 oil workers strike against the privatization of the oil industry in that country.

Discussing the prospects for working people in the United States, Koppel pointed to the signs of working-class resistance that marked the parade itself. One was the defense campaign for the Charleston Five, which many unionists here first heard about at the march itself.

The five are dockworkers facing frame-up charges arising from a January 2000 cop riot at a picket line against the use of nonunion labor on the Charleston, South Carolina, docks. Ken Riley, president of International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) Local 1422 in Charleston, was one of the ILA members who took part in the march and promoted solidarity for the fight waged by his local.

Also visible was the fight to demand residence rights for undocumented workers. Members of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) carried signs saying, "Amnesty for all immigrants." Also marching were members of the Laborers Union sporting T-shirts that declared, "One Language--Solidarity." Both unions, with a heavily immigrant membership, have been prominent in the amnesty campaign.

Teachers at the City University of New York marched with signs saying, "We want a contract." Public school teachers, also facing contract negotiations, turned out in large numbers. The city administration is on a big push to deal a blow to the union by imposing "merit pay" and undermining seniority rights, among other attacks.

While many union contingents carried preprinted signs for one or another of the Democratic Party candidates for mayor, Koppel's message met with a positive response among many of the workers at the parade.

As Democrat Mark Green rapidly glad-handed his way through the UNITE contingent, three garment workers stepped closer to hear what Koppel was saying as he spoke about the employers' offensive against working people throughout the country and the world. They told Koppel they were marching because the garment shop where they worked had recently shut down and left them jobless. Koppel said his campaign argued for a working-class alternative to endorsing the "lesser evil" of the two parties of the bosses. "We point to the road to change which is what we, as working people, can do to fight to defend our interests," he said. "And we need our own government--a government of workers and farmers."

He said the bosses are driven by their race for profits to speed up production, lengthen the workweek, slash wages and benefits, and attack union rights. Several workers Koppel spoke with noted from their own experiences that they had seen shops close only to reopen under a different name with no union and lower wages. Koppel noted that coal miners in Pennsylvania and Ohio were setting an example for all labor by mobilizing the ranks to defend their union rights.

José Luis López, a member of Laborers Local 79, which organizes construction workers, mason tenders, and others told socialist campaigners with some pride that he was a veteran of many protests at nonunion construction sites where workers showed up with the now-famous giant inflatable rats. He bought a copy of Perspectiva Mundial.

López was originally hired by a company paying $7.50 an hour. "Companies are exploiting workers, paying almost the minimum, and it's important to be united to fight this," he said. A few years ago he joined with about 300 other workers to fight for union contracts, refusing to work until the bosses agreed. Now he makes union-scale wages, about $25 an hour.

Many workers and a number of young people stopped by the socialist campaign table with a display of revolutionary literature and the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial. Two workers subscribed to the Spanish-language magazine, and 19 bought copies of the Militant. Several signed up for more information on activities sponsored by the socialist campaigners.

Later that afternoon Koppel joined a discussion by 40 people at a meeting in Washington Heights that heard a panel of seven youths report on their fact-finding trip to Cuba as part of the Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange. Koppel also took part in that visit as a Militant reporter. The meeting was sponsored by several political organizations in the Dominican community there.
 

Martín Koppel is the editor of the socialist newsweekly The Militant and of the Spanish-language monthly magazine Perspectiva Mundial. He is a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party.

Koppel, 44, a native of Argentina who grew up in the United States, has been involved over the years in building solidarity with struggles of workers and farmers both in the United States and internationally. He has been active in defense of the Cuban Revolution, in the campaign to force the U.S. Navy out of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, and in other protests against imperialist assaults on working people around the world.

In July he participated as a Militant reporter in the Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange, a week-long fact-finding trip to Cuba by more than 150 young people from the United States. Together with other participants in that trip he is joining in public reportback events to tell the truth about the Cuban Revolution and oppose Washington's four-decade-long aggression against the Cuban people. Koppel has frequently reported firsthand on developments in Cuba for the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, including a March conference in Havana marking the 40th anniversary of Cuba's defeat of U.S.-backed mercenaries at the Bay of Pigs. He has helped organize and spoken at several events in New York in defense of the Cuban Revolution.

A longtime supporter of the Puerto Rican independence struggle, Koppel has spoken several times on behalf of the SWP National Committee at the annual United Nations decolonization hearings, joining with the broad range of pro-independence forces testifying there. In August 1999 he visited the protest camps set up on the U.S. Navy's bombing range in Vieques, and has taken part in numerous actions here in support of that struggle as well as the campaign to free the Puerto Rican political prisoners.

Koppel has also traveled extensively in Latin America and the Caribbean to take part in political conferences and meet workers and peasants engaged in struggle, from the Movement of Rural Landless Workers in Brazil to working-class protests in Argentina, as well as in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Grenada.

Before joining the Militant staff in 1991, he was a steelworker in Chicago and member of the United Steelworkers of America union. There he was active in opposing the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1990-91.

Koppel first became involved in political activity while an exchange student in Marseille, France. The next year, in 1977, he joined the Socialist Workers Party in Baltimore. There, as a unionist working at the giant Bethlehem Steel plant, he took part in numerous actions from the defense of affirmative action to support for workers at the Newport News shipyard in Virginia fighting for a union.

Koppel is the editor of Nueva Internacional, a Marxist magazine in Spanish. He is also the editor of Puerto Rico: Independence is a Necessity by Rafael Cancel Miranda, the author of Peru's Shining Path: Evolution of a Stalinist Sect, and one of the three interviewers for Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces; all three are published by Pathfinder.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home