With less than one week remaining in the effort to raise $80,000 for the Socialist Workers Party-Building Fund, socialist workers in cities around the country report they have mailed in or are collecting the final payments in the fund-raising campaign. With $14,500 remaining to be turned in, many local fund organizers say they expect to go over their goal.

Public Party-Building Fund meetings in recent weeks have shown the interest among workers and others in discussing working-class politics and the possibilities of building a communist party today. Reporting from Miami, Omari Musa said that Margaret Trowe, a guest speaker from Boston, spoke for the Socialist Workers Party together with Young Socialist Nicole Sarmiento on “The Worldwide Capitalist Crisis, Working-Class Resistance, and the Revolutionary Party.” A garment worker involved in a fight to organize a union in his plant and a couple of veterans of the class struggle in Venezuela attended.

In response to a question on whether Washington had sunk into a quagmire in Iraq, Trowe said, “No. The Vietnamese organized a movement that for decades waged a revolutionary struggle for national liberation. That is not the situation in Iraq. Washington is occupying Iraq and what it is experiencing is simply the result of the occupation—including scattered attacks by remnants of the reactionary Saddam Hussein regime—not an uprising of the Iraqi people.”

Sarmiento spoke about her campaigning with the Young Socialists for Britton in the California elections, and what she learned in explaining the Socialist Workers Party program to other young people and workers.

Laura Garza spoke in New York City on October 5 on “The Working Class and the Fight for Women’s Rights.” A college student and a unionist who received a flyer about the meeting at the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride rally in Queens the previous day attended and gave a contribution to the fund.

Michael Italie reports that new contributions at the meeting push the total pledges in New York over the $10,000 goal.

Fund supporters in Washington, D.C., organized a meeting for SWP leader James Harris on “The Reality of the World Capitalist Crisis Today” at the new local Pathfinder Bookstore.

Nancy Boyasko reports that Harris explained in his presentation that the U.S. ruling class presents an image of being all-powerful. “The view of the Socialist Workers Party is that workers and farmers today have real long-term advantages internationally,” Harris said. “But what is lacking is leadership. Building a revolutionary party is the most important question before humanity today as the world moves toward more capitalist-created famines, poverty, and war.”

Between the event and contributions received in the mail that day, $990 was raised toward the local goal of $2,700. Six workers who are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union at two different plants have made pledges.

The fund drive ends October 15. All contributions received by Saturday, October 18, will be counted in the final tally. Checks should be made out to SWP, and mailed to the SWP, 152 W. 36th St., Room 401, New York, N.Y. 10018.

See fund chart  
 
 
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