Over the past three months, hundreds of working people and youth responded generously to the effort to raise money to help finance the work of the SWP.

Key to the success of the fund drive were political events organized by fund supporters around the country for SWP leaders to speak on world politics: from the rising struggles of working people in Latin America, to the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution and its lessons on the 30th anniversary of the military coup in Chile, to the fight for women’s rights.

In addition, socialist workers reached out to co-workers and unionists, students, and others for contributions. In Washington, D.C., for example, fund supporters who are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers won four co-workers to contribute to the fund.

Contributions came in up to the last minute in Pittsburgh and Atlanta. Sarah Harris, the fund organizer in Atlanta, reports that a large contribution was made at an October 17 Militant Labor Forum on the capitalist “justice” system.

The forum featured a panel of speakers including Angela Brown, a leader of the Youth Task Force. The group is organizing to repeal Georgia Senate Bill 440. The legislation, which went into effect in 1994, allows the prosecution of children as young as 13 in adult courts, places them in adult prisons, and mandates a minimum 10-year sentence without parole for specified felonies. Also speaking were Asheerah Walker Williams, whose 15-year-old son was unjustly convicted under the legislation and is serving a 15-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter, and Arlene Rubinstein of the Socialist Workers Party.

After the formal part of the program, an auto worker initiated organizing a meeting for the Youth Task Force through his union and on the spot decided to add $100 cash to his earlier contribution to the Party-Building Fund.

Harris says that a week earlier an appeal was made at the Militant Labor Forum for contributions to the fund and two new regular forum-goers, both workers, also decided to pitch in.

The success of the fund drive demonstrates the interest socialist workers are finding among working people and youth in the socialist perspective on political developments and the need to build the revolutionary party.

See fund drive chart  
 
 
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