Vol. 72/No. 21      May 26, 2008

For more than an hour, workers discussed with Kennedy the important issues before the labor movement, with translation between French and English. Strikers wanted to discuss the declining rate of unionization in the United States, the growing weight of immigrant workers and the place of the fight for legalization in the labor movement, and their determination in their own fight against Petro-Canada. Some 260 members of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, Local 175, have maintained round-the-clock picket lines here since being locked out by Petro-Canada in November.

Kennedy explained the importance that she and her running mate Róger Calero, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president, attach to their fact-finding trips to other countries to learn about the conditions of workers and farmers and to let them know about the conditions and struggles in the United States.

A participant in a May 11 Militant Labor Forum here asked Kennedy why the May Day actions for legalization of immigrants in the United States were smaller this year than last.

“What’s important is that tens of thousands of workers have mobilized on May Day over political demands for three years in a row now,” Kennedy said. “There were some 15,000 workers and students—many of them in high school—in the streets of Chicago where I participated. One worker in the country for only two months proudly told me ‘I climbed over the fence.’ This no-fear attitude among a vanguard layer of workers is strengthening the whole working class,” she said.

On April 8 Kennedy participated in a solidarity picket line of striking teaching assistants and their supporters at McGill University. The 1,100 members of the Confederation of National Trade Unions have been on strike for four weeks to improve their working conditions and raise their wages. Kennedy received enthusiastic applause when she spoke to the crowd.

During her tour of Montreal, Kennedy also spoke to a class at the University of Montreal that will be going to Cuba for three weeks. Kennedy said her campaign uses the Cuban Revolution as an example that a socialist revolution is both necessary and possible. For almost an hour, students raised a series of questions. One asked how Kennedy could speak of a workers and farmers government when farmers are making so much money growing corn for ethanol. Kennedy explained that the countryside is class-divided. Debt-ridden small farmers are being driven off their land by the high costs of feed and fuel, while giant agricultural companies are raking in superprofits. She said that her party is for forging an alliance between workers, small farmers, and other exploited producers.

Kennedy also joined a picket line to defend five Cuban revolutionaries imprisoned in U.S. jails; met with Ricardo Astudillo, a member of the staff at the Bolivarian Center of the Venezuelan Consulate; and sat down with Hubert Gendron-Blais, Marc-André Faucher, and Jessyka Boulanger—three leaders of the Union Association for Student Solidarity—who described some four decades of student struggles in Quebec as well as the fight this year at the University of Quebec at Montreal to defend education. In addition Kennedy was interviewed by CKUT radio at McGill University for a program called Labour Radio.

Annette Kouri, Michel Prairie, John Steele, and Joe Young contributed to this article.
 
 
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