Vol. 79/No. 22 June 15, 2015
For those involved in labor and social struggles the Militant is an indispensable tool to learn about each other’s fights and get political clarity needed to make further advances.
As we go to press, we’ve received just shy of $100,000 toward the $115,000 Militant Fighting Fund goal. All checks that arrive in our office by June 9 will be counted.
“That’s simple,” Luis Chiliquinga told Arlene Rubinstein in Washington, D.C., when she asked why he supports the Militant. “The economic struggle is not sufficient. The Militant has a revolutionary perspective that’s needed in this country and around the world.”
Chiliquinga attended a May 23 Militant Labor Forum titled “How to Advance the Fight Against Police Brutality. Defending the Cuban Revolution Today” with Omari Musa from the Socialist Workers Party as the keynote speaker. Musa recently returned from a solidarity conference in Cuba.
Chiliquinga is a leader of the fight for $15 and a union at McDonald’s in D.C. “This is the right moment to sharpen the pressure and build our movement,” he told forum participants. “Things have changed because we started pushing.”
“We’ve sold way more renewals to people we’ve met going door to door in the previous months than we anticipated,” Katy LeRougetel reported from Calgary, Alberta, June 1. “Three of the four readers who renewed this week are workers who signed up on the doorstep.”
A construction worker renewed for 12 weeks and bought four books, 50 Years of Covert Operations in the US, I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived, The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning and Teamster Rebellion.
“He asked if all the money ‘went to the cause,’ so I explained the Militant Fighting Fund,” LeRougetel wrote. “He decided to make a donation along with the renewal and book purchase.”
Nat London in Paris reported June 1 that three contributions from sailors and ship maintenance workers on the Marseille waterfront have helped put the fund over the top in France.
“Everyone was really impressed to learn about the massive iron miners’ strike in Mauritania and glad to know that resistance has been building to police violence in the U.S.,” Marc Kinzel, a ship maintenance worker on the SNCM ferryboat line, told London. “It reminded us of the way the police attacked our picket line on the waterfront here.”
Kinzel has been signing up co-workers to receive weekly Militant articles that supporters translate into French. The SNCM workers have been engaged in a long struggle to defend their jobs in the face of company plans for layoffs of sailors and maintenance workers.
The effort to expand the readership of the Militant and build a working-class movement continues. Join us! Contact distributors nearest you listed on page 8. Send your contributions to the Militant at 306 W. 37th St., 13th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
Next week’s issue will feature the final scoreboards for the international subscription campaign and the Militant Fighting Fund.
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Improved online ‘Militant’ is valuable tool for workers
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