The campaign includes sales of a new pamphlet in preparation by Pathfinder Press entitled, Cuba and the Coming American Revolution: Organizing to Win the Inevitable Battles by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. Campaigners will also take goals to sell two other recent pamphlets: The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning by Barnes, and Pathfinder Was Born with the October Revolution by socialist leader Mary-Alice Waters.

The campaign comes at a good time, as Militant supporters are joining with workers and farmers involved in a number of struggles. These include fights by unionized meat packers and organizing drives by those without union protection. Workers are on strike at the Hormel plant in Rochelle, Illinois, and 1,600 packinghouse workers in Fort Morgan, Colorado staged a three-day strike in February to protest intolerable working conditions imposed by the bosses.

Garment workers organized by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) are picketing Hollander Home Fashions in Los Angeles, while UNITE-organized laundry workers have waged successful efforts to win union recognition in several areas.

Coal miners, seeking ways to defend their lives and their union, have held meetings over the past several months to advance their demand for medical and pension coverage for miners suffering from black lung, as well as for the widows of miners who have died from the disease. This is part of a broader movement in mining communities against the offensive by the coal operators and their government.

Socialist unionists recently organized a Militant sales team to visit the coalfields in Colorado and Wyoming, where they sold 25 copies of the paper to miners during a morning shift change at a mine portal of the Pittsburg & Midway Coal Co.

Ferment among workers in the airlines industry is growing. Ramp workers, flight attendants, mechanics and other airline workers, and pilots at Northwest, Southwest, American, and United Airlines are involved in contract fights. Their unions are running up against anti-union laws, all the way up to the no-strike order by U.S. president George Bush.

Farmers across North America are organizing meetings and protests to resist the consequences of the tightening cost-price squeeze that is throwing them more and more deeply into debt and driving manyoff the land. Thousands of farmers and their supporters, for example, took part in a March 14 day of action across Canada.

Struggles such as these heighten interest among working people in the root cause of the economic and social crises they face under capitalism. These fights lay a firmer foundation for solidarity with those engaged in battles against racist discrimination and cop brutality, assaults on immigrants, and mounting attacks on the conditions of women that fall heaviest on those in the working class.

Such resistance increases interest in revolutionary literature such as the Militant, PM, and Pathfinder books and pamphlets not only among the workers and farmers engaged in these struggles, but also among youth and students who sense the political importance of such battles and are attracted toward them.  
 
Cuban Youth Tour
Meetings now under way for Cuban youth leaders who are speaking at college campuses and to other audiences in both the United States and Canada provide more opportunities to find students, workers, and others interested in the facts about the socialist revolution in that country and the reasons for the U.S. rulers' unrelenting economic, political, and military pressures against Cuba.

During the tour, and continuing throughout the spring, members of the Young Socialists will also be joining with other young people to build the Second Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange, to be hosted by student and youth organizations in Cuba in July 22–30.

The exchange will be an opportunity for young people in the United States to visit Cuba and learn firsthand about the revolution. Out of these and other activities, YS members are encouraging fellow youth to participate in the World Youth Festival scheduled for later this year in Algeria.

Finding others interested in the conferences is part of the struggle to construct a worldwide anti-imperialist youth movement.

Organizing to publicize and take part in the public meetings of the Cuban youth leaders is part of preparing for the spring socialist sales campaign. Efforts to spread the truth about what the workers and farmers of Cuba have accomplished increases the numbers of young people attracted to emulating that example here and expands the openings to recruit young people to communism.  
 
Plans for subscription drive
Supporters of the Militant and PM are encouraged to plan the first week of the subscription drive as an all-out effort to get out the socialist press as broadly as possible.

Doing so will help systematize the political work in workers districts by branches of the Socialist Workers Party and YS members. Consistent sales of Pathfinder literature help finance the halls and bookstores where socialist workers and YS members meet to discuss and organize participation in the class struggle and political activity.

Workers carrying out communist trade union and political work in various industrial unions will also take goals to sell literature on the job, at union meetings, and to other working people engaged in struggles.

Young Socialists members and chapters of the YS across North America and elsewhere will discuss goals and join in the common effort.  
 
Pamphleteering for socialism
Together with winning subscriptions to the Militant and PM, socialists will be pamphleteering with the new pamphlet, Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, as well as The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning and Pathfinder Was Born with the October Revolution.

These pamphlets take up burning political questions in U.S. and world politics today and help explain the history and traditions of the revolutionary working-class movement.

Special offers on the pamphlets to those purchasing a subscription to the Militant or PM for the first time will be publicized in these pages soon, along with local and national sales goals for them.

Cuba and the Coming American Revolution will include the foreword by Jack Barnes to the recently published book Playa Giron/Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas by Fidel Castro and José Ramón Fernández.

The new booklet will also include major excerpts from the talks given by Barnes at recent meetings in New York and Seattle to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Cuban victory and of the 1961 literacy campaign in that country; an excerpt from the book Capitalism's World Disorder describing the campaign by the SWP and Young Socialists in October 1962 to oppose the U.S. drive against the Cuban revolution during the so-called "missile crisis" that year; and a preface by Mary-Alice Waters.  
 
Winning the inevitable battles
As emphasized on the back cover of the book Playa Girón, Cuba's workers and farmers 40 years ago showed in practice that "with political consciousness, class solidarity, unflinching courage, and revolutionary leadership that displays an impeccable sense of timing, it is possible to stand up to enormous might and seemingly insurmountable odds--and win."

That political lesson is also at the heart of the new pamphlet--"organizing to win the inevitable battles," as the subtitle puts it--as well as at the heart of every issue of the Militant and PM and the entire range of Pathfinder pamphlets and books.

It is a message of great interest to every worker who's been told there's no point to fighting because they and their unions will only be weakened and crushed.

To every farmer who's been told they're on their own up against the banks and agribusiness.

To every working person who's been told there's no alternative to "tightening their belts" in face of the bipartisan offensive against social entitlements and democratic rights.

To every young person who's been told that it's just "human nature" to "look out for number one" and turn your back on human solidarity.

Join us in campaigning for socialism in the weeks to come!
 
 
Related article:
'I have to have a copy of that book!'  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home