BY JANE HARRIS

NEWARK, New Jersey - "One thing we have emphasized," explained Osborne Hart, who organizes the Pathfinder fund drive in San Francisco, "is the need to make payments steadily. Of those who have made a pledge to the drive, over half have already made a payment." Jim Gotesky, who also helps with the campaign in the Bay Area, added, "No stone has been left unturned, collection cans for the fund are being placed on Pathfinder literature tables and in the Pathfinder Bookstore."

So it's not an accident that Pathfinder supporters in San Francisco are on top of the chart this week, well ahead of schedule. A good example to emulate.

The purpose of the $125,000 Pathfinder fund drive, which has completed the third week of a 10-week-long effort, is to raise the money to keep the 300 plus Pathfinder books and pamphlets at the fingertips of working-class fighters who need them.

In 1994, a new and expanded edition of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics; Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions was put out by Pathfinder with an attractive new cover.

This title is a handbook for workers coming into the factories, mines, and mills, as they react to the uncertain life, ceaseless turmoil, and brutality of capitalism in the closing years of the twentieth century. The Changing Face of U.S. Politics shows how millions of workers, as political resistance grows, will revolutionize themselves, their unions, and all of society.

It is now being reprinted since the first run is sold out. The book is currently being translated into French.

Pathfinder is also reprinting two important Education for Socialist Bulletins so that enough quantities are available at the national Black political convention to be held in St. Louis September 27-29. The meeting has been called by the National African American Leadership Summit and the Million Man March Inc.

The bulletins are Independent Black Political Action 1954- 1978: The Struggle To Break with the Democratic and Republican Parties and The National Black Independent Political Party: An Important Step Forward for Working People.

Along with the bulletin Aspects of Socialist Election Policy, and the books Changing Face and Politics of Chicano Liberation, these two bulletins trace the real historical record of the working-class struggle for political action independent of the capitalist class and its parties. They offer rich lessons for today.

Accelerating collection of pledges for the fund drive will make the reprint program of these and other titles viable.

Key to the success of the fund is reaching out to fellow unionists on the job, at plant gates, and political activities and organizing meetings where the fund and its goals can be discussed.

Communist workers in Sydney, Australia, just called such an event for October 5. Reports on plans for these meetings and what took place at them are needed for this column along with photographs.

Jane Harris is a member of the United Transportation Union.  
 
 
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