The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 67/No. 35           October 13, 2003  
 
 
Fund campaigners close in on $80,000 goal
 
BY ANGEL LARISCY  
More than $12,000 was contributed this past week toward the Socialist Workers Party-Building Fund, helping to continue closing the gap in the final weeks of the $80,000 effort. Supporters of the fund effort have until October 15 to meet the goals. In two areas, the Twin Cities and Atlanta, fund supporters have decided to raise their goals, and in other cities pledges now surpass the local goals.

As the reports below indicate, public meetings organized for leaders of the Socialist Workers Party to address major questions of world politics facing working people and to discuss the opportunities to build the revolutionary workers movement continue to attract workers and youth interested in the socialist perspective.

Contributions to the fund should be sent to SWP, 152 W. 36th Street, Room 401, New York, NY 10018. Checks should be made payable to SWP. For funds to be included in the weekly chart they need to arrive by Saturday.
 

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BY JASON ALESSIO  
CRAIG, Colorado—On September 20 a Party-Building Fund meeting was held at the Pathfinder Bookstore here entitled “A Sea Change in Working-Class Politics and the Cuban Revolution.” The evening’s speaker was Joel Britton, the Socialist Workers candidate for governor of California and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party’s work in the labor movement.

People came from southwestern Colorado, Denver, New Mexico and Utah to attend. One person from Carbondale, Colorado, reconnected with distributors of Perspectiva Mundial through a recent campaign to get readers to renew their subscriptions to the socialist press. He arrived early to browse through the bookstore and decided to purchase $70 worth of literature and renewed his subscription for 2 years.

In the discussion one person asked the Socialist Workers candidate, “If there are 135 candidates why don’t you unite with other parties on the left?” Britton replied, “There are no other parties or candidates that are for organizing the working class to defend its interests along a course that leads to taking political power and expropriating the capitalist rulers. They are for reforms of the existing capitalist system. We are for revolutionary change. Our movement’s history is made up of a number of fusions with other revolutionary groups and parties and this will be true again in the future as the class struggle unfolds, but none of the candidates today agree with a revolutionary program.”

A local coal miner, with nearly 30 years in the mines, came with his wife after becoming interested in the event through daily political discussions with a socialist coworker. He said that in the 30 years of living here he has never run into socialists and wanted to hear more about socialist politics. He is involved in an effort to organize the union at the mine where he works.

Larry Hales, a 26-year-old student and assistant teacher, came from Denver to the event. He said, “From what I know about Britton, he is the only candidate that speaks in the interest of working people. He is the only one that goes into the streets to discuss politics.”

The event raised $670 toward the $2700 local goal.
 

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BY ERNIE MAILHOT  
CHICAGO—Among those attending the Socialist Workers Party-Building Fund event in Chicago were participants in the recent Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange, union activists, immigrant rights fighters, and a young woman from the neighborhood where the Pathfinder Bookstore is located. A unionist who had just been released from several weeks of detention and is fighting government deportation attempts attended with his wife.

The Chicago fund meeting featured a talk by Joe Swanson, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party in Des Moines, Iowa. Swanson began by saying that the Socialist Workers Party celebrates the many anniversaries that mark advances for working people, including the upcoming 45th anniversary of the victory of the Cuban revolution and the 55th anniversary of the founding of the Korean workers state. He explained that while the unions today are not growing in numbers or getting stronger today, the key thing is the continuing resistance of working people to the effects of the capitalist crisis.

A lively discussion of over an hour followed the presentation and took up why the Socialist Workers Party focuses its forces in the industrial unions, a socialist view of education, and the historic changes in today’s U.S. armed forces, among other things. Some $976 was collected at the meeting for the fund. New pledges were made totaling $700, raising the total Chicago pledges to $4001 towards the goal of $4200.

See fund drive chart  
 
 
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