"Launching this fund is a good way to celebrate what we've accomplished at the conference," said Margaret Trowe, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party who led the appeal for funds. "Workers who read the Militant and PM know how important it is for them in resisting the capitalist offensive and in charting a revolutionary perspective."

The audience, which had just heard a presentation by Socialist Workers Party national secretary Jack Barnes closing the three-day gathering, responded enthusiastically to Trowe's fund pitch.

They stomped their feet, shouted out pledges being made to the fund, wrote out checks and envelopes with pledges, and generally enjoyed themselves. By the end of the evening, $62,500 has been raised in pledges and contributions.

Those at the Active Workers Conference returned to their respective cities to begin the work of organizing a broad fund-raising campaign to raise the $125,000 over the next four months.

They are mapping plans to approach co-workers who read the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, workers and farmers who are engaged in struggles around the country, and others who value the irreplaceable role of the two socialist publications.

Contributions from workers and farmers are the chief source of funding for the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial. They get no financing from wealthy businessmen, bankers, or commercial advertising in their pages.

A growing number of miners have become regular readers of the Militant. Over the past year the number of subscribers who are members of the United Mine Workers of America rose from 12 to 62. This increase is an indication both of the rising social movement of working people in the coalfields and the efforts by communist workers to reach out to them--from the successful strikes in New Mexico and Wyoming that beat back the concession demands of Pittsburg and Midway Coal Co., to the campaign to defend lifetime health benefits for miners and their families.

The two socialist publications not only present truthful news of interest to working people. They also provide a Marxist class explanation of the main questions facing working people.

This was captured in the front page of the May 8 issue of the Militant, headlined "INS assault in Miami strikes blow to the working class: In defense of the Cuban revolution, in defense of the working class!" which condemned the April 22 commando-style raid by 150 federal cops on a Miami home that seized Cuban child Elián González. The socialist press campaigned both to demand that Washington return six-year-old Elián González to Cuba and to explain why the INS raid in Miami, far from being a blow for justice--as the overwhelming majority of the forces in the Cuba solidarity movement argued--was a move by the U.S. ruling class calculated to reinforce the powers of the hated migra police. They pointed out how the Clinton administration used the federal court rulings on the Cuban six-year-old's case to affirm the broad authority of the executive branch to determine and carry out immigration and foreign policy--to be used against the interests of working people.

To help with the fund campaign or to make a contribution, contact your nearest distributor of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial. Please make checks and money orders payable to the Militant, earmarked Militant/Perspectiva Mundial Fund, and send them to: The Militant, 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014.