The Sparts: Pro-Union

To the Editors of the Crimson:

On Monday, May 2 the Spartacus Youth League widely distributed a leaflet calling on Harvard students to take a stand in solidarity with the food service workers and attend the official Local 26 union rally on May 3. As our leaflet said. "Harvard's attempt to isolate Local 26 and prevent students from taking a side with the campus workers must be defeated.

The Spartacus Youth League calls on all students to support Local 26 in its fight against the unionbusting Harvard administration. Build the rally Harvard would like to silence! Contrary to the ravings of Mike Anderson (Crimson, May 6), we were not excluded from the march or rally; in fact, workers took our signs and our efforts to mobilize students were enthusiastically supported by many in Local 26.

Anderson's Big Lie is so self-evidently false that his only hope can be to scream loud and often enough and perhaps people will start believing. Of course, like all Big Lies, this one, that "the Sparts" are a "right-wing front" that "jeopardized a union" does not have to be widely believed so much as accepted as an excuse for excluding, attacking and silencing revolutionary socialists like the SYL.

SYL slogans like "Harvard Loves Walesa. Hates Local 26" frustrate cold war liberals like Mike Anderson, but any class conscious worker knows something's fishy when Harvard honors Lech Walesa while busting Local 26. Solidarnosc is the only "union" loved by Ronald Reagan. Harvard, Wall Street, and the Apartheid regime of South Africa because it is a movement to bring Poland back to the "free world" of capitalist exploitation.

Mike Anderson used to be a Friend of the SYL and was a co-signer of a letter to The Crimson (never printed) protesting an attempt by Moonies. Dean Epps and the Conservative Club to break up an SYL forum "Stop Solidarity's Counterrevolution" back in November 1981. It appears that it is Mr. Anderson who has bolted toward the right wing.

The SYL has a proud history of strike support work at Harvard. When Mike Anderson was still wearing short pants the SYL was mobilizing student support for Local 26. From a defense campaign for Sherman Holcombe, a black union activist victimized by Harvard in 1976 to bringing students out to rally with Local 26 today, we actively take a side with campus workers against the racist, union-busting Harvard administration.

Victory to Local 26! Nationalize Harvard! For worker, student, faculty control of the University! Alden Cavanagh   Spartacus Youth League