FORT MORGAN, Colo. — Socialist Workers Party members and supporters and a member of the Communist League in Canada came here to bring solidarity to workers locked out by Cargill bosses and to prepare Militant coverage to tell the story of these meatpackers’ fight to workers everywhere. In addition to Teamsters at Cargill, the team brought copies of the Militant and books by SWP leaders to workers at the King Soopers’ industrial bakery in Denver and two JBS-owned meatpacking plants in Denver and Greeley.
After looking through the Militant, a maintenance department worker at the King Soopers bakery who declined to give his name said he wanted to follow the lockout of the Cargill workers and the paper’s other labor coverage. He signed up for a subscription and also gave a donation for the locked-out workers, asking us to deliver it to the Teamsters union hall in Fort Morgan, which we did.
After talking more with Joel Britton, he also picked up a copy of Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by Víctor Dreke, who had led Cuba’s combatants aiding that struggle.
A Spanish-speaking woman and her son who were coming out of work at JBS in Greeley stopped in their tracks when she saw the Militant headline: “No war on Cuba!” After checking with me to make sure the paper was in support of the Cuban Revolution she bought a copy. She said they were originally from Cuba and opposed the U.S. attacks on people there.
On the picket line in Fort Morgan, when Joe Young told a worker from Rwanda named Serge that he was the Communist League’s candidate for Quebec’s National Assembly, Serge wanted to know why someone from Montreal was in Colorado supporting them. After discussing the importance of the fight and the class struggle worldwide, he also bought a copy of the new book by Dreke, in French.
Pablo Castro, a 22-year-old locked- out electro mechanic in the Cargill plant, spoke with Britton at length about the Militant’s support for their fight against the lockout, its defense of Cuba and its revolution, and on the party’s stance that the fight against growing Jew-hatred today is in the interest of all workers. Castro signed up to get a Militant subscription and a copy of the Dreke book.
Some workers who are Haitian were waiting to get their weekly union lockout pay in a park across from the union hall July 17. As soon as some workers heard team member Jean Luc Duval from Detroit speaking in Creole, they put down their phones and engaged in a wide-ranging discussion on the need for the labor movement to wage a fight to win amnesty for all undocumented workers.
They too were interested in the Cuban Revolution and opposed the U.S. rulers’ war on Iran. Some bought books we showed them; and some asked if we will come back again so they could continue to discuss these questions more deeply. “We hope to come again,” Duval said.
Judy Burgess, a restaurant worker we have come to know from our trips to Greeley, greeted us with, “I knew you’d be back because of the Fort Morgan lockout. What’s the latest there?” She renewed her Militant subscription and suggested ways we can reach other workers in the region.
All in all, over the four days we were in Colorado, five more workers signed up for introductory subscriptions. Eleven bought books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries, including Dreke and Thomas Sankara, the leader of the 1983-87 popular revolution in Burkina Faso.