LOS ANGELES, USA—Mechanics at MTA (the public transportation system) know our newspaper Red Flag, and they usually refer to members of ICWP as members of Red Flag.
This May Day, together with the leadership of the Party, our club decided that we would march with the mechanics’ union group. We hoped that many workers we knew from other divisions would come so we could talk to them. Actually, not that many came. However, our club gave out the newspaper and made two new contacts.
One of them works on the trains and is very political. He understands a lot about what is happening worldwide, and realizes the need to organize beyond the union struggle.
He told us that three groups come to his workplace to distribute their respective newspapers. Among them, he mentioned Red Flag. Taking advantage of the opportunity, we identified ourselves as members of Red Flag and we told him that in our division we have a communist club and that we are trying to organize other clubs on the different shifts. We told him that we have networks of workers who help to distribute the newspaper inside MTA, as well as workers, students and teachers who help us distribute the paper outside, sometimes reaching up to 800 papers per issue at different MTA divisions.
Our goal is to organize in the different divisions, because we understand that the working class is crucial for a communist revolution. I gave our new contact the copy of Red Flag which had a front page article from our club.
This fellow worker got interested. He asked us if we would like to keep in contact with him. We replied that we would be delighted, and we exchanged information. He told us that he gets Red Flag from another worker who takes two and gives him one of them.
We wanted to find out more about the other worker, but he said that this co-worker wasn’t that political. He also warned us that we shouldn’t think that if he attended meetings, he was already a member of ICWP, because he said he had some disagreements with our political line. We assured him that ICWP is open to all workers, that disagreements and doubts are welcome, and that we were sure that we would resolve his disagreements and doubts.
The other contact, also a worker, showed interest in our communist line. We are already planning to invite both of them to an informal club meeting to talk with them and advance the political struggle with them.
