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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 33, 16 August 1948, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Denver’s citizens point with great pride to the fact that theirs is the only mile-high city in the United States And they do not require visitors to do their own measuring They take them to the 15th step of the State Capitol, where it is plainly marked that, at that spot, one stands 5280 feet above sea level: If this does not seem colossal enough to the visitor, other superlatives art brought forward, such as the fact that Colorado has the largest number of high peaks of any state – 1,080, which are more than 10,000 feet high.
Like every visitor to the Colorado Rockies, I was impressed by the superb scenery and the wonderful Climate. Different from other visitors, I was more impressed by the fact that here were the early outposts of the militant American labor union movement. To mention the names, Ludlow, Cripple Creek, Boulder, is to recall the brave struggles of the labor pioneers of the Western Federation of Miners and the early IWW against the ruthless, labor-hating mine bosses of the West.
That we are now organizing the outposts of the new, militant workers’ movement in Colorado and Utah was still more impressive to me. They are small groups, to be sure, but they are the first Trotskyist centers to be established in this area for many years. I am confident that, in time, this will mean that the voice of revolutionary socialism will once again be widely heard.
The Socialist Workers Party election campaign attracted considerable attention in both the Salt Lake City and Denver newspapers. The fact that there are national candidates, who are attacking the Communist Party from the left during these redbaiting days, seems to be newsworthy. I think that the readers of The Militant will be interested in a few paragraphs from a press interview run in the Denver Post of Aug. 6. They follow:
“Mrs. Carlson differs with the ‘crude idea’ that Stalin is setting out to conquer the world. She believes that the Kremlin is setting out to construct a set of buffer states for the protection of Russia.
“‘But from both the Marxist and military points of view, this action is futile,’ she declared.”
And I think that Militant readers will also be interested to know that we are getting in a few licks at Norman Thomas, who still poses as a “Socialist.” Here are a couple of additional paragraphs from the same interview :
“‘Thomas was boasting in a magazine article that the Democrats and Republicans have stolen his platform,’ Mrs. Carlson declared. ‘But there isn’t any danger of them stealing our platform.’”
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Last updated: 11 October 2022