BY SARA LOBMAN
"I've been looking for this book," said one participant in the annual festival sponsored by the pro-independence newspaper Claridad in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as she picked up a copy of FBI on Trial. She explained that she was doing research on Washington's disruption of groups that oppose U.S. policy, including those that support independence for Puerto Rico. FBI on Trial prints the ruling and other documents from the Socialist Workers Party's 1986 victory in its lawsuit against U.S. government spying. She bought a copy of New International no. 6 with the article "Washington's 50-year Domestic Contra Operation," on the history of the government's harassment against the labor, Black, antiwar, and other movements.
The four-day Claridad festival, which included live music, food vendors, and arts and crafts, attracted tens of thousands of independence supporters and others across the island, including thousands of university and high school students. The Cuban Solidarity Coordinating Committee and Ofensiva 92, which is campaigning to free 15 Puerto Rican political prisoners being held in the United States, were among the organizations that had tables at the event.
Ron Richards, who distributes Pathfinder books in Puerto Rico, joined a team of five socialists from the United States to staff the table that included Pathfinder titles. Richards recently won a victory when charges filed against him for selling revolutionary literature in a working-class neighborhood in San Juan were dropped.
An article after his arrest in the November 17-23 issue of Claridad noted, "We frequently see [Richards] participating in different activities of the independence movement in the country, selling literature published by Pathfinder Press. At a stage in our struggle where socialist literature is found with less and less frequency in the bookstores of the country, their sales and distribution constitutes a political task of growing importance for socialists."
Fifty-three books and pamphlets, in English and Spanish, including 10 Pathfinder catalogs, were sold at the conference and at the University of Puerto Rico.
Pathfinder sales representative Cappy Kidd wrote in about a recent meeting with the buyer at a Spanish-language bookstore in the Chicago area who "was originally pessimistic about the market for political books." He changed his mind, Kidd noted, "once he saw our books and book covers." The buyer ended up ordering all four issues of the Marxist magazine Nueva Internacional. The total order was for $100.
Elizabeth Lariscy, who volunteers at the Pathfinder bookstore in Brooklyn, reports that sales in Brooklyn more than doubled in October and November compared to the average of previous months. The increase in sales coincided with the Militant subscription drive, in which Brooklyn distributors excelled.
"Some $2,400 worth of books were sold in eight weeks, including $1,657 off of tables on street corners, college campuses, and at political events," Lariscy said. All together copies of 94 different titles were sold. The best- seller was the Pathfinder catalog - 115 copies were sold!
Some $400 worth of books and other literature was sold from a booth at the San Francisco Bay Area Book Festival November 4 -5. Forty thousand people attended the event. Twenty-two different titles were sold, as well as 2 posters of the Pathfinder Mural, 20 copies of the Militant, and 1 Militant subscription.
Seth Galinsky, reporting from Puerto Rico, Cappy Kidd from Chicago, Elizabeth Lariscy from Brooklyn, and Mary Lipman from San Francisco contributed to this column.