During his election campaign last fall as the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Miami, Italie was fired by Goodwill Industries where he had been a sewing machine operator. This occurred a few days after he participated in a televised candidates’ debate where he spoke against Washington’s brutal military assault on Afghanistan and in defense of the Cuban Revolution.

Italie wrapped up a nationwide tour to win support for his fight and to organize other working people in defense of workers’ rights by visiting Washington, D.C., and western Colorado and Wyoming, and Massachusetts this past week. During the course of the campaign thousands of people have participated in meetings, and signed petitions or sent letters to Miami’s mayor urging the city government to demand Goodwill reinstate Italie.

The conversation at the Kemmerer portal was one of many that Italie had with coal miners and students during a three-day tour here. In addition to distributing the Militant newspaper and literature on his case at the plant gate at Kemmerer, Italie had a meeting with a member of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) there and another at the Deserado mine near Rangely, Colorado.

"I want to thank you for joining me in my fight," Italie said to Ed Hinkle, a member of UMWA Local 1984 at the Deserado mine. Hinkle sent a letter to Miami mayor Joseph Carollo protesting Italie’s firing. "It was letters like yours and thousands of other petitions that forced Goodwill to back down from its efforts to challenge my unemployment benefits," he said of a recent move by the bosses.  
 
Cuban Revolution
Italie showed Hinkle a videotape of news coverage about his firing, which led to a discussion about the Cuba Revolution. The news clip includes an interview with Goodwill CEO Dennis Pastrana, who states that Italie’s presence in the plant would be a "stain" on the American flag because he opposes "private ownership of property" and "supports the Cuban government."

Hinkle said that at the time of the revolution he was a Navy seaman. "We didn’t like Batista. We knew what was going on between the U.S. and Cuba. Many of us supported Castro and getting rid of the dictator. When they announced they were communists, that really hurt them. They lost my and many others’ support for the revolution."

The coal miner then added that today he admires "what Cuba has done for its people" and that he and others were influenced by the anti-communist propaganda of the time. "I never did like McCarthyism," Hinkle explained, referring to the antilabor witch-hunt led by U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. "That was one of the reasons I wrote the letter on your case."

At Mesa State College Italie participated in a sales team that set up a Pathfinder literature table at a cultural event sponsored by the Black Student Alliance. Following the event the head of the Black Student Alliance purchased a copy of Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by Jack Barnes, after Italie discussed his case with him.

Twenty-one people participated in an April 16 meeting featuring Italie in Washington, held at the Mt. Pleasant Library. Rah-ed Ghuma, an Arab student from Oman and a member of the Young Socialists from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, spoke on the impact of the Palestinian struggle on him.  
 
Bosses’ laws
Italie said during his talk that he will not be getting his job back at Goodwill Industries. "This fight has scored important victories," he said. "It was the thousands of signatures and letters to the company and the city administration protesting my firing that forced Goodwill to back down from its attempts to deny me unemployment benefits. And over the last months, thousands of people have learned the class nature of justice under capitalism and the need to organize independently of the Democrats and Republicans in order to rid the world of injustice, racism, and economic oppression."

Tom Headley, an Amtrak railroad worker attending the meeting, organized to get more than 100 of his co-workers to sign petitions on Italie’s behalf. He explained that this free speech fight "has been a very useful thing. I have been able to get into all kinds of discussions on the job with co-workers on the Cuban Revolution, the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and the right of workers to join unions."

Glova Scott, a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, contributed to this article from Washington.  
 
 
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