The new book is now available for shops and libraries to order. Participants in the campaign to promote this title know from their experience with the English original that many buyers, managers, and librarians will want to stock it. Unionists, working farmers, and young fighters whose first language is Spanish will be interested in helping with this effort, and in buying and reading their own copy.
The international team of volunteers who are staffing the Pathfinder stand at the Havana International Book Fair have taken a bunch of the new title with them, along with the new book Che Talks To Young People in Spanish and English and a full range of Pathfinder's titles. The campaign to promote Capitalism's World Disorder runs through March 15. This column welcomes reports from campaign activists. James Vincent writes from Pittsburgh that workers at the first United Steelworkers of America International Women's Conference bought two copies of Capitalism's World Disorder during the first day of their meeting, attended by around 800.
Below we run reports sent in by members of two sales teams who made a special effort to promote the book and the Militant newspaper among dockworkers. We lead off with a report from a protest to defend affirmative action programs in Miami.
A young woman bought $62 worth of Pathfinder books, including a $10 Readers' Club membership, a copy of Capitalism's World Disorder, and titles on Cuba and women's rights at a February 3 hearing on affirmative action in Miami. Other participants picked up titles by Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, and Fidel Castro.
Volunteers set up outside the Gusman Theater, where the hearing was taking place, and received a good response from the crowd going in and out. They sold 42 copies of the Militant as well as one subscription. The issues of the paper that reported the massive Martin Luther King Day rally in South Carolina, demanding the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol building, sold out first.
On February 4 a team of three volunteers took Militants to the International Longshoremen's union hall in Seattle to talk to workers about the dockworkers' struggle in Charleston, South Carolina.
As workers arrived to pick up their paychecks, they told us they were following the fight on the union's web site. A couple bought the paper right away. When we reported that eight longshoremen had been framed up and three buses had gone to Columbia to join the protest against the Confederate flag, workers stopped for a longer discussion, and several bought the paper. We sold six Militants in all.
"We know all about this," said one. "They tried to bring the same ship, Nordana, up here but decided not to when they heard we wouldn't work it." Another said, "My brother works on the dock in Charleston. They are standing up for a principle and against union busting and I support them."
Some said they questioned the union officials' move to help the shipping companies lower labor costs under a new "sweetheart" union deal. The agreement sets up a second ILA Local in Baltimore and pays $14 an hour to new hires, several dollars less than the veteran ILA members make. Many questions were raised in a couple hours of discussions with these workers. Twelve copies of the Militant were sold.
Rollande Girard in Miami, Cecelia Moriarity in Seattle, and Mary Martin in Washington, D.C., contributed to this article.
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