Interview with Jerry Gordon

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The following is an interview with Jerry Gordon, coordinator of the Emergency National Conference Against U.S. Military Intervention in Central America/The Caribbean to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 14-16. Gordon, a trade unionist for many years, was national coordinator of the National Peace Action Coalition, which organized a demonstration of one million people on April 24, 1971. The interview was conducted by Alan Benjamin.

Socialist Action: Why do you feel this conference is important today and what are its basic goals?

Jerry Gordon: The initiative for the Emergency National Conference developed after the invasion and conquest of Grenada, the mining of the Nicaraguan harbors, and the spate of articles in the Washington Post and New York Times confirming Reagan's intention of going all out in Central America to overthrow the Nicaraguan government and to defeat the revolutionary movement in El Salvador.

These plans were also getting the active support of Congress, which consistently voted massive appropriations bills, the latest of which was an additional $62 million for El Salvador. It was clear that the U.S. interventionalready far advanced-threatened to become qualitatively greater.

Today there is an imperative need for the anti-intervention movement to unite and plan actions of the most massive type possible. The purpose of the conference is to lay the basis for a united anti-intervention movement and to plan actions in the months ahead, after the elections, and in the spring.

The conference will also serve a critically needed educational function. It has the potential of attracting workers new to the anti-intervention movement who will want to learn more about the history and nature of U.S. involvement in Central America and the Caribbean.

At the same time, people with many different perspectives will be coming to the conference. Some of them feel that the anti-intervention movement ought to focus on the elections in November to defeat Reagan and elect Mondale and congresspeople who, they think, would be for anti-interventionism.

Others feel that what is needed is an AFSCME Local 3235: notices about the conference to the peace activists belonging to that union. Also, Ron Weisen, president of USWA Local 1397 and one of the call's first endorsers, has circulated 1000 calls and has informed us there will be a sizeable number of steelworkers at the conference.

TAURANT S.A.: It seems as though the conference has already gained national attention. Ronald Reagan referred to it in a statement published in the Washington Post. What exactly did he say, and why do you think he said it?

J.G.: In the July 19 Washington Post an article headed "Reagan attacks totalitarian Nicaragua and pushes for rebel