"My campaign is directed at working people, the unemployed, trade unionists, workers resisting employers' attacks, and youth who want to fight for a better and just world," Forrestal said at a live televised debate November 2 sponsored by the League of Women Voters where all mayoral candidates were present. "My starting point is not meeting the standards of Wall Street bond ratings agencies, but defending the interests of working people."

"I am running because working people in Pittsburgh need an alternative to the big-business parties of the Democrats and Republicans," he said. "I am the only candidate speaking against Washington and London's war--now in it's 27th day--against the people of Afghanistan. I am opposed to the stepped-up campaign by the government on all levels to the unrelenting attack on our rights in this country."

In his statement Forrestal spoke out against the frame-up of Salam Ibrahim El Zaatari, a student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Zaatari is being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of trying to board a plane here with a utility knife in his carry-on bag while on his way home to Lebanon to see his parents.

"Our campaign sets an example," Forrestal concluded at the debate. "It points to the need for independent working-class political action, and at the same time it underscores the need to build a revolutionary working-class party in the United States, a party whose goal is to fight for a workers and farmers government."

Forrestal is a member of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and works underground. He has joined with his union in actions against the coal bosses' drive to undercut safety in the mines, weaken the UMWA, impose speedup on mine workers, and run roughshod over communities in the coal mining region.

Over the last two weeks of the campaign Forrestal participated in a "Mayor's Night" program, and two debates, one aired live on PCNC television and replayed the following night. He also participated in a candidates night sponsored by the West End Elliott Citizens Council.

After a debate at Carnegie Library, two workers approached the socialist candidate for more discussion. One was a technician for the debate, the other the janitor at the library. "You won the debate," the janitor told Forrestal. A Republican candidate, frustrated with the coal miner's political explanations, blurted out, "The problem isn't always capitalism!" but later told Forrestal in front of several other people that Karl Marx was right about one thing: that workers are exploited by the capitalist class.

The Socialist Workers mayoral campaign received attention in several local newspapers as well. Between interviews and comments on the campaign in editorials, the Forrestal campaign was covered in the New Pittsburgh Courier, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Tribune-Review, and the City Paper. Only one decided to print the socialist candidate's statements against the imperialist war against Afghanistan. The campaign was also mentioned on at least two AM radio stations.

At the League of Women Voters debate the candidates were asked questions on crime, taxes, and "how to make Pittsburgh safe against terrorist attacks."

Forrestal responded by saying he sees what government officials call the "war on crime" is really a war on the Black community. In Pennsylvania, he pointed out, Blacks are imprisoned at a rate 14 times higher than whites. The socialist worker said he would fight to eliminate all taxes on working people and is for a sharply graduated income tax on the wealthy.

Forrestal encouraged working people to continue to fight for their rights and against employer assaults in the face of patriotic appeals to back the war effort by the bosses and their government. He pointed to the example of miners in Alabama who are fighting back after an explosion killed 13 miners at the Jim Walter No. 5 mine.

At one point during the program Mayor Tom Murphy boasted about creating jobs in Pittsburgh. Forrestal responded that US Airways had just laid off 24 percent of its workforce, affecting close to 2,000 workers in Pittsburgh, even while the company is receiving tens of millions of dollars in government subsidies that workers will never see.

In an interview with the Militant, the socialist candidate called for full employment coverage at union-scale wages for workers out of a job; a massive government public works program and shortening of the workweek with no cut in pay to create jobs; and cancellation of the Third World debt through which the big imperialist banks and financial institutions are bringing economic ruin on working people in those countries.

Throughout the campaign Forrestal has been promoting Pathfinder books such as Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, Capitalism's World Disorder, Fighting Racism in World War II, and Labor's Giant Step as useful tools in his campaign to get out the truth about U.S. imperialism and its wars, the true history of working-class struggle, and the possibilities for building a revolutionary leadership of working people in the United States.

At a wrap-up campaign event at the Pathfinder bookstore here, the candidate encouraged everyone present to help in the effort to get these books, as well as many other Pathfinder titles, into hands of workers, farmers, and youth, as well as onto shelves of bookstores and libraries in the area.  
 
 
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