The Socialist Workers Party is leaving Utah.
The party is shutting down its bookstore, ending its Friday night labor forums and giving up coordinated efforts to field state and local candidates."We're basically dissolving and our (core) members moving to other cities," party Chairman Dan Fein said Monday. "We have become too small in numbers here to do things a branch of the Socialist Workers Party is required to do."
The pullout ends 20 consecutive years of a formal party presence in Utah.
Fein, who is moving to Atlanta, remains an optimist.
"I'm not depressed. I'm looking forward to Atlanta," the 51-year-old Kennecott worker said. "The Socialist Workers Party will be back in Salt Lake City at some point. I have no doubt about that. As workers get engaged in more fights and combats, the Socialist movement will return."
Hard-core party activists had dwindled to about four, including Fein, in recent months. Only 15 regularly attended the weekly forums, and in the past election, Socialist Workers presidential candidate James Harris received just 235 Utah votes.
Mike Broumas, production worker at a Salt Lake City snack-food company and organizer of a chapter of Young Socialists, said dedicated Socialist supporters remain.
"If there's a protest - if there's another anti-gay homophobic thing going on here with the gay-straight alliance or something - we'll be there," said Broumas, 18. "There is a future for the party here. . . . Utah is a hotbed of struggles going on right now."