BY CHRIS REMPLE
PITTSBURGH - Nearly 70 people attending the first
constitutional convention of the Labor Party in Pittsburgh
bought copies of the Militant. Four participants subscribed to
the socialist weekly and one to its Spanish-language sister
publication, Perspectiva Mundial.
Convention delegates approaching the table saw signs reading, "No to the Bombing of Iraq!" and "Fight for Jobs, not Steel Mill Profits."
Propped up on a rack, the first books likely to catch their eye were issues of the Marxist magazine New International. Also on the rack were The Communist Manifesto, By Any Means Necessary by Malcolm X, Problems of Women's Liberation by Evelyn Reed, and U.S. Hands Off the Mideast! Cuba Speaks Out at the United Nations.
One toolmaker from Newark, New Jersey, a delegate from the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, was excited to find the table. An immigrant worker from Egypt, he bought the Militant and made sure he had the address of the Pathfinder bookstore in Newark and that his name would be placed on the Militant Labor Forum mailing list there.
He returned the next day and bought the New International no. 7, featuring "Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's Assault on Iraq, as well as The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin, and a Pathfinder catalog.
On the second day of the convention, a diary farmer came to the table and explained that he had come to the convention to see whether this formation might be the ally that farmers needed. He had recently sold his farm and retired after being unable to make a living at it. He bought a Militant after a discussion on the fight being waged by Black farmers against the government and its discriminatory loan policies.
Students from the City University of New York-Staten Island campus stopped at the table and bought Revolutionary Continuity, volumes 1 and 2, by Farrell Dobbs, as well as a Militant. Two Black women workers from Brooklyn, one of whom was a supporter of the Grenadan revolution, subscribed to the Militant.
Several members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee came by the table. One bought the new pamphlet Puerto Rico: Independence Is a Necessity by Rafael Cancel Miranda.
Overall, nearly $300 in books and pamphlets were sold.