Paul Pederson has just joined the editorial staff. Pederson is the Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Congress in the 12th District, which includes parts of Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. Like Koppel, he has been soapboxing and street campaigning in New York, presenting a revolutionary working-class perspective.

Prior to joining the Militant staff, Pederson, 27, worked as a meat packer in Long Island, New York, and was a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 342-50. He has become known among many co-workers as a socialist and politically active worker.

Pederson joined the Young Socialists in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, in 1996, after participating with a delegation of young people in the first U.S.-Cuba Youth Exchange in Havana. He later worked as an airline worker and carried out political work together with other socialist workers in the Machinists union.

In 1998 Pederson moved to New York to serve a stint as a volunteer in the printshop that produces the Militant and Pathfinder books. At this summer’s Socialist Workers Party convention he was elected to the party’s National Committee.

On September 20 Pederson will be part of a four-day team to Puerto Rico together with Koppel and Chessie Molano, the Socialist Workers candidate for lieutenant governor of Illinois. Reporting for the Militant and joining as supporters of the Puerto Rican independence struggle, they will take part in the Grito de Lares, the annual pro-independence celebration that marks the 1868 uprising in Puerto Rico against Spanish colonial rule.  
 
 
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