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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 28, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------New Workers World Party branch formed in San Diego
Special to Workers World
San Diego
San Diego was well represented at the Workers World Party conference held in New York Dec. 2-3. Included in the delegation from San Diego were several workers employed in high-tech industries, a teacher, a teacher's aide, a disabled worker and a Latina student activist.
Shortly after their return to the West Coast, members of the delegation sat down to discuss the conference and Workers World Party. They were joined by San Francisco WWP leader Richard Becker and a local truck driver who had been unable to attend the conference. It quickly became clear that forming a branch of WWP in San Diego was at the top of everyone's agenda.
Commenting on the group's decision, member Bob McCubbin said: "It's a logical next step for us. We've been doing political work together long enough to know that we all belong in the same organization. We all read Workers World newspaper and we all see the need for socialism. We were all tremendously excited and inspired by the Workers World conference. Workers World is where serious revolutionaries like us can find a home."
A border megalopolis
San Diego has evolved considerably from the small "Navy town" it was a generation ago. The U.S. military is still very much in evidence here, but the area's military-dominated industries, especially the aerospace companies, have been downsized.
Now the sixth-largest city in the United States, San Diego is home to many biotechnology, medical-tech, computer and internet-based companies. It is also an important center for tourism and, increasingly, for international trade.
Tijuana, the huge Mexican city just across the border, exerts an influence on the character of San Diego that helps to distinguish it from Las Vegas, Phoenix and the other fast-growing cities of the Southwest.
San Diego and Tijuana are really one megalopolis. They are interdependent in a thousand and one ways. The San Ysidro border crossing 20 minutes from downtown San Diego is said to be the busiest border crossing in the world.
It's not just tourists. Thousands of Tijuanans work, study and have family on the San Diego side, and vice versa. The hideous, rusty metal wall that slashes across the scrub hills at the border is a constant reminder of U.S. racism and hypocrisy.
Mexican workers who must enter the United States without documents know their labor is desperately needed in the fields and farms of San Diego County and throughout California and the Southwest. Yet they are forced to risk their lives trekking for days through the formidable terrain of East County.
As of this writing, nearly 600 border crossers have died in the frigid mountains and torrid desert since the establishment of Operation Gatekeeper.
San Diego has an active and growing progressive movement. Members of the new WWP branch are involved in many areas of this movement, including coalitions working to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, end the sanctions against Iraq and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
WWP members are mobilizing for a counter-inaugural demonstration, initiated by the San Diego chapter of the International Action Center, on Jan. 20 in conjunction with the protest that day in Washington.
Members of the San Diego branch intend to continue their efforts at building this movement and offering political direction, now with the added organizational and ideological guidance that a revolutionary workers' party can provide.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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