NEW YORK - Many members of the Young Socialists and other youth joined in the last weekend of the project to get Pathfinder's pick-and-pack operation up and running here December 28-29. They were part of the volunteer crews that assembled shelves, unloaded dozens of pallets of books, and cleaned, counted, inventoried, and shelved the literature.
A couple of Young Socialists from Cleveland drove five hours out of their way, passing through Pittsburgh and Morgantown to pick up others on their way to New York to be a part of this project. Four Young Socialists from Montreal also came down to volunteer for a few days.
Sébastien Desautels, a 20-year-old YS member from Montreal, was seeing the Pathfinder building for the first time. "I never thought this building has everything it has in it. I thought it was just a printing press. Seeing how the Militant and the books are made was impressive," he said after getting a tour of the building.
Desautels, who works in a cardboard factory, said, "All the work we've done is different than working in industry. Here you know why you're working, because these are tools for the struggles of the working class. It was good to work hard, not for an hourly wage, but to have more books in the building to be better able to organize our movement." He and another YS member from Montreal decided to stay an extra day to help finish work on the pick-and-pack project. Desautels, along with other volunteers, took advantage of a sale of damaged books to stock up his library, buying dozens of titles by Malcolm X, Ernesto Che Guevara, Thomas Sankara, The Struggle for a Proletarian Party by James P. Cannon, and others.
Antonio Olivo, a 21-year-old worker from New York, also volunteered for the project. "What inspired me the most was all the different books. What you could see was that as a team we could reach our goal, and our goal is to make a revolution. This has encouraged me to read more," he explained, as he carried a book by Malcolm X and a copy of the Action Program to Confront the Coming Economic Crisis that he bought at the sale.
Aaron Armstrong, a 20-year-old student and member of the YS from the Twin Cities, came to help for three days. He and another YS member from the Twin Cities raised money to pay for their way to New York. "I wanted to help the work get done, and I wanted to see the press and publishing house," Armstrong said. "I was really impressed, seeing what goes into putting out the Militant. I got to see The Bolivian Diary [of Che Guevara] coming off the press! It was a really good experience, because we go out and sell this literature, and it's up to us to keep it running."
Diana Newberry is a YS member in Morgantown, West Virginia. Patricia O'Beirne is a YS member in Montreal.