“Everywhere I campaign I will tell working people about your courageous strike at the JBS meatpacking plant and how your fight for dignity and respect, higher wages and safety, is an example for working people and all unions,” Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Texas, told Morgan Robinson, a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, on the picket line in Greeley, Colorado, March 24.
“We voted 99% to strike,” Robinson said. “This is about the abusive conditions in the plant.” She told Kennedy that many workers don’t get proper training as it is only done in English and Spanish.
“Any worker, no matter where they are from, should have equal rights,” Kennedy said. “The labor movement must fight for an amnesty so bosses can’t use your immigration status to pay lower wages or impose abusive conditions.” Robinson agreed, taking a campaign flyer on the need for amnesty.
“I have never seen anything like this movement,” Carlos Gallegos, who has worked at JBS three times, told Kennedy the next day, describing how he and his co-workers stood up for their rights.
“We are seeing more struggles by working people in the U.S. and throughout the world,” Kennedy said. “The war that Washington is waging against Iran is part of the same war against working people in the U.S. to increase profits for the owners of the factories and the capitalist rulers.” Gallegos got a subscription to the Militant. When he saw a group of his co-workers he yelled, “Hey, come over here and meet the candidate for governor of Texas.”
SWP member Joel Britton visited a JBS striker and his companion at their home in Greeley March 27. After discussing Washington’s war in Iran and the stakes for working people in blocking the capitalist drive toward another world war, as well as the much needed union-led fight for amnesty, they signed up for a subscription to the Militant and got the Spanish editions of Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? and The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
In discussions on picket lines, on doorsteps, on the job and at demonstrations, members of the Socialist Workers Party across the country have found a real interest in the fight in Greeley, in the party’s election campaigns, the Militant and books by SWP and other revolutionary working-class leaders. Along with members of Communist Leagues in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, they are campaigning to sell 1,300 subscriptions to the Militant, the same number of books and raise $165,000 for the Militant Fighting Fund by May 12.
Locked-out refinery workers
Ilona Gersh and Amy Husk, two SWP members in Chicago, joined a rally to support members of Steelworkers Local 7-1 locked out at the British Petroleum refinery in Whiting, Indiana, March 27. Hundreds of workers turned out — locked-out refinery workers, those from area steel mills and other workplaces. After looking over articles in the Militant, five bought subscriptions.
SWP members Dean Hazlewood and Leroy Watson joined the BP picket line in solidarity a few days later. Several United Auto Workers members from the Ford assembly plant in South Chicago were there at the same time. “I’ve been looking for an unbiased source of information,” one of them told Hazlewood when he showed her the Militant. They talked quite a while, and she decided to subscribe to the paper and bought Teamster Rebellion and Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power.
Hazlewood and SWP member Naomi Craine campaigned door to door and in the parking lot of a JBS pork plant in Beardstown, Illinois. “I’m glad they’re on strike! They need to do that here. JBS doesn’t care at all about the workers,” said a woman at one door. She had retired a couple years ago, after working at the JBS plant for 34 years.
At the plant, workers were interested to learn more about the Colorado strike. They face the same issues, especially line speed and safety. Several bought copies of the Militant. One worker from Togo also got a copy of the French edition of We Are Heirs of the World’s Revolutions by Thomas Sankara, who led the popular 1983-87 revolution in Burkina Faso.
The “No Kings” rally in Minneapolis March 28, billed as the “flagship” event because of recent brutality by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents there, drew over 100,000 people.
Many marchers were attracted to signs at the table set up by members of the Socialist Workers Party: “U.S. hands off Cuba,” “U.S. out of the Middle East,” “Oppose Jew-hatred and defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews,” and others.
Some 30 copies of the Militant, 13 subscriptions, and four Pathfinder books were sold there, part of the many dozens of books and Militant subscriptions sold at “No Kings” events across the U.S.
To campaign for SWP candidates and help get the Militant around, contact the distributor nearest you.