SAHUARITA, Ariz. — “I will get out the word about your strike wherever I go. This strike is important and bringing more solidarity to bear is important. My campaign is behind you 100%,” Alyson Kennedy, SWP candidate for U.S. president, told more than 50 Asarco strikers and their supporters at the weekly Sunday dinner at the Mission Mine picket line here Feb. 23.
Some 1,700 copper workers — members of the Teamsters, United Steelworkers and five other unions — have been on strike since Oct. 13, standing up to Asarco bosses’ union busting.
“What we are doing is for every other worker in the country,” Chris Antone, above right, a striker who has worked at the Mission Mine for 12 years and is an assistant chief steward for Teamsters Local 104 at the mine, told Kennedy, center. “It’s not going to get better, just worse.”
“The way workers can change things and better our conditions is by standing up and fighting like you’re doing,” Kennedy said. “It’s out of experiences like the battle you’re waging that workers in their millions will become convinced that we need to build our own party, a labor party.”
Kennedy joined a strike protest rally the next day in front of the Phoenix Convention Center (see article on front page). On Feb. 25 she joined strikers on the picket lines at the Ray Mine in Kearny and the Hayden smelter.