We urge you to join and contribute to the campaign to raise $125,000 for the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial. Fighting workers, farmers defending their land, and youth resisting the brutalities of capitalism need the socialist publications and a working-class voice in English and Spanish now more than ever.

Between September 4 and November 13, every reader of the two publications can help reach out to all who value the unique role of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, and ask them to make a generous contribution. The fund will help finance the basic operating expenses, reporting trips, and other costs of producing the two periodicals.

Workers and farmers are the only source of funding for the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, just as they are the correspondents, distributors, and readers of these periodicals. That's a proud working-class tradition. No funding comes from bosses, bankers, or wealthy advertisers. That's the way we want to keep it.

In the last few months, a growing number of workers who are part of a new and growing militant vanguard developing across the United States have found that they need these publications for the struggles they are involved in. Many have said they appreciate the truthful coverage of social struggles that the socialist papers provide and the way it helps connect fighters with each other, in the United States and internationally. They also welcome articles, editorials, and features that explain broader political questions that working people need to understand to confront the capitalist world we live in and be able to transform it.

Consider the following examples:

• What other newspaper has been covering the emerging social movement in coal-mining regions around the fight for health care? Worker-correspondents for the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial were at the recent series of hearings in several cities on the protection of miners from the coal dust that causes black lung disease. You can read the powerful testimony by miners who exposed the coal bosses for sacrificing workers' health and safety to the profit drive, and demanded the federal government protect miners' health care.
• When the U.S. government launched a commando-style raid by 150 federal cops on a home in Miami, seizing Cuban six-year-old Elián González, the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial were virtually the only voice that offered a clear working-class response. They campaigned both to demand that Washington return the child to Cuba and to explain why the raid was a move by the U.S. rulers calculated to reinforce the powers of the hated immigration cops. They pointed out how the Clinton administration used the case to reinforce the broad authority of the executive branch to determine immigration and foreign policy.
• The socialist publications have provided feature coverage of how workers and farmers in Cuba are organizing--from factories to farm cooperatives--to confront the effects of the world capitalist economic crisis, and the political initiatives by the revolutionary leadership to win a new generation to a working-class course.
• Firsthand coverage from Europe, southern Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific on struggles of workers and farmers.
• The Militant has reviewed and printed the introduction to the new Pathfinder pamphlet, The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform under Capitalism by Jack Barnes. It explains why working people are the only force that can transform education--into universal and lifelong learning--through a revolutionary reorganization of society. And it presents other issues such as the death penalty and the fight for social security as the class questions they are.

These are just some illustrations of why many working people value the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial and will be glad to contribute to ensure they continue to publish.

The Militant and Perspectiva Mundial Fund will get a boost as it is carried out together with the campaign to win new subscribers to the two publications, which are also the campaign newspapers for the Socialist Workers candidates, James Harris for president and Margaret Trowe for vice president.

Supporters of the socialist publications are now mapping out plans in local areas to raise the funds needed to continue this kind of coverage every week. Partisans of the working-class periodicals will send out mailings to subscribers, talking to co-workers about the fund, organizing public fund-raising meetings in their cities, and digging deep into their own pockets to make a contribution. Please make a pledge and join in these efforts.

To help with the fund campaign or to make a contribution, contact your nearest distributor. Please make checks and money orders payable to the Militant, earmarked Militant/Perspectiva Mundial fund, and send them to the Militant, 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014.

In solidarity, 
Martín Koppel 
Editor