The bookstore is located in a lively working-class district that includes businesses and restaurants, residential housing, and meatpacking and other plants. SWP and YS members have been involved with other workers in the area who are waging struggles for union representation at the Dakota Premium Foods beef slaughter house, against police brutality, and for immigrant rights. They have found a welcome reception from workers and young people to tables of revolutionary literature they have set up on street corners, and to the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial at factory gates.

Participants were welcomed by Karen Ray, a leader of the project to renovate the premises for the new store, and Miguel Olvera, a meat packer at Dakota Premium Foods and leader of the union-organizing drive there. "I want to welcome you to the first public event of our new Pathfinder bookstore," said Olvera. "It's a place where workers like us can come and get books and discuss the political issues. Workers will come here looking for solutions to problems we face."

"Moving the bookstore here will enable socialist workers and supporters of Pathfinder to have a political base from which to reach out to political fights and working-class struggles in Minnesota and the surrounding area," Ray said. Socialist workers will be able to concentrate their political activity in the workers district through street tables, keeping the bookstore open regular hours, and establishing a weekly Militant Labor Forum series that becomes known as an important meeting where central issues of U.S. and world politics are discussed each Friday evening.

"This beautiful new bookstore is the result of the work of many volunteers," Ray said. The main bookstore display room is spacious enough to hold the complete array of Pathfinder titles and many other books useful to working people in struggle today. "Some volunteers helped find this new location. Many helped in the construction work, including several with specialized skills in carpentry and electrical wiring that proved invaluable. Two volunteers helped raise the more than $3,000 needed for the whole project. This has been a truly broad effort by a number of supporters of the bookstore from different political generations and experiences."

A lively question-and-answer period followed the feature presentation by Steve Clark and reflected a range of struggles taking place in the Midwest. A leader of the fight by immigrants in Minnesota for their right to have drivers licenses spoke, as did a worker who had just returned from selling the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial in the Omaha, Nebraska, area, where meat packers at the big Nebraska Beef plant will be voting in a union election August 16.

A meat packer employed at the Quality Pork Products slaughterhouse in Austin, Minnesota, drove up for the event. "Sometimes we want to solve things very quickly," he said of workers and farmers resisting the employers' assaults. "But it takes time to develop political consciousness within our class. The weapons we have are the books here," he said, pointing to the dozens of Pathfinder titles on the shelves.

Several people came to the meeting who had recently met a team of socialists selling literature on street corners in the area. A college student who had bought a subscription to the Militant at a literature table in front of a grocery store the previous day brought five working-class youth with her to the grand opening celebration.

One worker in attendance had bought a subscription to Perspectiva Mundial at a recent demonstration against the police killing of Efrain Depaz, a young Mexican worker. He had visited the previous location of the Pathfinder bookstore and bought Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas and Cuba and the Coming American Revolution.

Two Socialist Workers Party candidates for public office were introduced to the gathering: Tom Fiske, SWP candidate for mayor of St. Paul, and Edwin Fruit, the SWP candidate for city council in Des Moines, Iowa.

Informal discussion among participants ranged over a wide variety of topics, underlining the point made at the beginning of the program about the eagerness of working people involved in struggles today to get together to discuss how to advance these battles and fight against the exploitation and oppression they face under capitalism.
 
 
Related articles:
Hunger for revolutionary books
New Pathfinder titles by Thomas Sankara  
 
 
 
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