“The overseas Militant reports, especially on, for example, the Kurds (their history) and President Chavez’s struggle in Venezuela are so informative and excellent—the Militant reporters should be complimented,” wrote Cincinnati subscriber Michael Smith in a message accompanying a subscription renewal.

Romina Green, a member of the Young Socialists, said she first read the Militant in 1999 as a student at Pasadena City College in California, trying to understand what was behind the U.S. war on Yugoslavia at the time. She read several socialist papers, but “the Militant was the only one that gave an accurate explanation of why the imperialist war was taking place.”

In 2002 Green went to Argentina and Paraguay as part of a Militant reporting team. She explained how useful it was, in preparing for the trip, to study the Militant coverage over the years of the class struggle in South America, as well as books by Pathfinder, in particular the explanation of Peronism in The Leninist Strategy of Party Building by Joseph Hansen, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party who at various times was editor of the Militant.

Helen Meyers, who has written for the Militant over the years, spoke about the history of the paper in building the socialist movement. She noted that on display were a number of pamphlets based on Militant articles. Among them was Revolt in France, on the May 1968 workers upsurge in France. A Militant reporting team interviewed workers and youth on the barricades in the streets of Paris and in the occupied factories. Two other such pamphlets were Watts and Harlem: The Rising Revolt in the Black Ghettos from articles in 1964-65, and Portugal in Revolt, on the 1974 popular upsurge in Portugal after the overthrow of the Caetano dictatorship and events leading to the independence of Portugal’s African colonies.

Meyers recalled working in the 1960s with Militant business manager Karolyn Kerry, who explained to her that in the earliest days the supporters of the paper had to physically defend their right to sell it against Stalinist thug attacks. For example, selling on the docks to longshoreman and merchant marine sailors in California was a priority. Several Militant distributors who were male had been attacked by members of the Communist Party. So female members of the Socialist Workers Party began to sell on the docks. Kerry said they assured their right to sell by always carrying very large and tall umbrellas over their arms.

Meyers described distributing the issue of the Militant in May 1970 that had an eyewitness account from Kent State University, where Ohio National Guardsmen had opened fire on students protesting the war in Vietnam and killed four people. “I was sitting on a bench at the entrance to the University of California in Berkeley,” she said. “I had a stack of 50 papers and was waiting for other members of the Young Socialist Alliance to join me in a sale. The papers sold out before they arrived.”

During the discussion period, Bob Laycock, a longtime Militant reader who currently works on the Pathfinder Print Project, said, “The New York Times calls itself the ‘paper of record.’ No, the Militant is the paper of record. The Militant is a paper of integrity that takes politics, accuracy, and reporting the truth seriously.”
 
 
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Anti-imperialist fighters greet ‘Militant’ anniversary  
 
 
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