Koppel joined his supporters in campaigning on the streets from Washington Heights in Manhattan to Sunset Park in Brooklyn. He engaged students in discussion at Hostos College, Columbia University, New York University (NYU), and Brooklyn College. He took part in a picket in front of Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) offices protesting the detention of immigrant workers; campaigned among garment workers coming off the job at Bush Terminal in Brooklyn; attended a house meeting hosted by a worker in Harlem; and participated in a Young Socialists fund-raising dinner.

Among the central political points Koppel explained in the course of his campaign was the imperialist character of the U.S.-British-led assault on Afghanistan, how it is part and parcel of the accelerated attacks on workers' rights in the United States and worldwide, and the growing opportunities for building a movement to replace the rule of the capitalist warmakers with a workers and farmers government.

Koppel joined more than 50 other activists in picketing the INS offices in Manhattan November 1 to protest the roundup and detention without charges of more than 1,000 immigrant workers since September 11. At the demonstration he spoke with members of South Asian rights community organizations and was interviewed by WNYC radio and Hoy.

Several days earlier the candidate had been well received by garment workers during a plant-gate visit to Bush Terminal in Brooklyn. A number of workers stopped by the campaign literature table set up outside the gates, purchasing four copies of Perspectiva Mundial, two Militants, and one New International. Several spoke about the way the bosses are using the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center as justification for not paying their employees. A Militant article about the fight being waged by garment workers in San Francisco for $850,000 in back pay caught their interest.

Five workers attended the house meeting in Harlem--one originally from Jamaica, and the other four hailing from the West African countries of Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal, and Burkina Faso. Discussion was lively and covered a wide range of political topics, from the ideas of Malcolm X, to the decline of Stalinism, working-class resistance today, and the history of the SWP.

A 22-year-old Dominican worker was among those who attended a campaign forum featuring Koppel in Upper Manhattan. He had recently met the Young Socialists and SWP at a campaign table in Washington Heights. He has since taken part in classes hosted by the two groups on New International no. 7 and has expressed interest in joining the YS.

Three students participated with others in a meeting with the socialist candidate at New York University November 1. One of them expressed interest in attending the YS class series being held in the Garment District on "Communism and Labor's Transformation of Nature," a recent series in the Militant.

At Brooklyn College the socialist mayoral candidate met with representatives of the Black Student Union and the Puerto Rican Alliance who plan to sponsor a meeting for Koppel on November 20. The administration had given them flak about having a candidate speak on campus. Koppel explained that he would be eager to come back for an event after election day because the socialists' campaign to win support for their political perspective continues 365 days a year.  
 
 
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