BY GREG McCARTAN
Members of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists are joining with others to build picket lines and protests to defend Cuba against Washington's latest aggressive actions. Socialist workers have stepped up their discussions on the job, and their efforts to get into the hands of unionists books from Pathfinder that tell the truth about the Cuban revolution. These political weapons include Ernesto Che Guevara's Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War and To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's Cold War Against Cuba Doesn't End (see ads on pages 6 and 9).
Meeting in New York, SWP leaders decided to adopt a goal of party branches selling 1,550 copies of the book by April 1. The beginning date of the eight-week drive was February 5, after local party branches and members in the trade unions had taken initial goals.
From reports at these meetings, and short articles sent into the Militant, one overriding fact emerges: due to the political polarization and interest among workers in considering radical proposals, revolutionary-minded workers can increase sales of literature on the job by taking Pathfinder books into work, showing them around, and talking about them.
At a meeting February 25 in New York, leaders of the Young Socialists also decided that the YS should join the campaign as part of responding to Washington's latest aggression against the first socialist revolution in the Americas.
Press review in `Daily Challenge'
The February 22 Daily Challenge, a paper circulated in
New York's Black community, published a review of Episodes.
"This classic work," says the review, "is Ernesto Che
Guevara's firsthand account of the military campaigns and
political events that culminated in the January 1959 popular
insurrection that overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of
Fulgencio Batista in Cuba."
Among the events promoting the book this week was the New York "Report back from Havana book fair," featuring the book's editor, Mary-Alice Waters. Seven copies of the book were purchased by participants in the meeting - many of whom already had purchased copies of Episodes - along with 25 copies of Pombo: un hombre de la guerrilla del Che (Pombo: A Man of Che's Guerrilla). This title, written by Harry Villegas, also known as Pombo, a brigadier general in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, was just published by Editora Política of Havana.
Socialists in New York are working with student leaders at the Borough of Manhattan Community College to organize an educational event on Cuba this spring. The student leaders purchased five copies of the book as part of their building activities.
With the upturn in labor resistance in Canada, such as the 100,000-strong march in Hamilton, Ontario, February 24, socialists there have decided to put selling Pathfinder books - and the Episodes in particular - at the center of their work. They sold one copy of the Episodes at the Hamilton demonstration, and seven people asked socialists to get back in touch with them later when they had enough money to buy the book.
Sandra Nelson, a member of the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers union from Chicago, faxed this report:
"Thursday night, February 22, I took a small selection of Pathfinder books into work at the corn oil refinery, planning to talk to each of my co-workers that night about Pathfinder Press and the new Episodes book.
"My first discussion was with a young Puerto Rican man who I was relieving in the control room. He looked through the selection, and I told him about the new book, including some of the editor's experiences in Cuba preparing for publication, and the importance of the book for working people today. As I talked, he carefully read through the table of contents and the first couple of pages of the introduction. When I paused, he said, `I want this book.' As he was leaving for home with the book under his arm, he turned and said, `Maybe we can discuss this sometime.' "