BY RUTH ROBINETT AND LUIS MADRID
NEW YORK - Pathfinder Fund supporters internationally rose
to the challenge laid out in this column last week. The
$18,309 collected - the best one-week total yet - puts the
campaign on solid ground as we enter the last three weeks of
the drive.
Supporters in New York City and Canada led the way, each jumping nearly 40 percentage points on the chart. Participants in an October 11 fund rally in Brooklyn paid nearly $5,000 toward the local goal. On their part, supporters in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver organized collections adding up to $2,043, to cruise to the top of the chart.
The funds received this week indicate that with similar attention the pace of contributions can be maintained and the pledges further increased. Comparable collections will be necessary in each of the final three weeks to successfully meet the $125,000 campaign.
The drive was also boosted by efforts made in several areas focusing on securing pledges from individuals in order to match or exceed their area goals. In the case of San Francisco, pledges now total $12,312 out of a goal of $11,000; pledges by Atlanta supporters stand at $124 over their $4,500 goal. Similar efforts led in Chicago to an increase in pledges of $2,707 for a total of $10,653 toward their $12,000 goal. After reviewing their pledges, fund backers in London and Manchester increased their joint goal from $1,200 to $1,500.
"The new spirit of labor resistance" was the theme of Robert Miller's talk at the New York fund event. An assembly worker and member of the United Auto Workers, Miller is also the Socialist Workers' candidate for governor of New Jersey. Pointing to the recent victories by the Teamsters over UPS, and the transportation workers in the San Francisco Bay Area, Miller underscored the new opportunities presented to Pathfinder supporters to reach out in the broadest way possible with the political weapons published by Pathfinder and with the fund effort. He pointed to increased resistance by workers to the economic pressures brought forth by the crisis of capitalism. Farm workers organizing campaigns in the West Coast and elsewhere and the Wheeling-Pittsburgh steel strike, he said, are examples of that resistance.
Pathfinder editor Luis Madrid, left, talking with students October 2 at a commemoration of the 1968 student massacre in Tlatelolco, Mexico. Madrid and Pathfinder supporter Margrethe Siem, who were on a sales trip there, were invited to the event by students at BUAP university in Puebla, Mexico. They sold 69 books and pamphlets to students, professors, and others over the week. Pathfinder's newly published Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism in Spanish was the top seller, with 16 copies.