Vol. 73/No. 40      October 19, 2009

In the second week of the drive, supporters of the fund have raised just over $18,000, or 19 percent of the goal. To be on schedule the fund should be at 25 percent, or nearly $24,000. The eight-week drive ends November 10. In the upcoming week, supporters in different areas will be discussing how to get and stay on schedule and to close a $3,000 shortfall in pledges toward the goal.

The meeting in Houston featured Róger Calero, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party and the party’s presidential candidate in 2004 and 2008. It was attended by 15 participants, including two garment workers attending their first Militant Labor Forum.

Calero explained that the current capitalist “recovery” is taking place “in the midst of a massive destruction of capital,” wrote Jacquie Henderson, one of the organizers of the fund in Houston. Calero took up the attack on abortion rights within the health-care debate, the expansion of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and imperialism’s drive for tougher sanctions against Iran. He explained the importance of working-class fighters “internalizing these facts today, so we will not be caught short politically as wars erupt, deeper social crises explode, and working-class struggles become life-and-death battles.”

Henderson reported that a lively discussion took place during the question-and-answer period. Are we in a depression like the ’30s now? Will unemployment continue to rise as the economy is “improving”? What does the destruction of capital have to do with leveraging debt?” participants in the meeting asked Calero.

Calero pointed to the surge in bankruptcies as an example of the “great unwinding of corporate leverage,” noting that in the first half of the year 117 nonfinancial U.S. companies defaulted on more than $300 billion of debt. More than $1 trillion in corporate high-yield debt—junk bonds—comes due between now and 2015. “This crisis is only beginning to unfold,” Calero said.

“It is clarity that the Socialist Workers Party brings through its program to working people, students, and others involved in struggles that will grow as the rulers continue to push us against the wall, and we begin to lose the fear to fight. They will be attracted to a revolutionary party that they know is not afraid to tell workers the truth about what the capitalist economic depression holds in store for them and will want to join us. That’s what we are inviting you to be a part of,” said Calero.

At the meeting $931 was collected for the fund. The money being raised is needed to aid the work of the Socialist Workers Party as it reaches out to workers, farmers, and young people with a revolutionary working-class perspective on the unfolding world economic crisis and imperialism’s expanding wars.

Party-building fund: Week 2 of 8