Vol. 73/No. 46      November 30, 2009

The purpose of the fund is to aid the Socialist Workers Party in reaching out to workers, farmers, and young people. Workers worldwide are living through the initial stages of a great economic depression marked by rapidly increasing unemployment. Those who do have jobs are working fewer hours, facing speedup and deteriorating, unsafe working conditions.

Workers are being confronted with the consequences of the dictatorship of capital and its drive to defend the interests of the wealthy bondholders, bankers, and industrialists. The Socialist Workers Party explains that working people need to confront the dictatorship of capital with a revolutionary movement that explains that workers must take political power out of the hands of the capitalist class to organize a socialist society that functions in the interests of the vast majority.

More and more workers are looking for answers to the roots of the economic depression they are living through. That has broadened the appeal of the fund, noted Dean Hazlewood, fund organizer in Los Angeles, where $9,242 was raised.

“We had 57 people contribute to the fund here. The participation in the drive was broader this time than in previous years. Fund supporters also got more contributions from coworkers on the job than in the past. We also saw an increase in participation from people who had been contributors but had not participated in the last several fund drives. The new political situation has brought them back around,” stated Hazlewood.

Joel Britton, the fund organizer in San Francisco, reports that $13,506 was raised for the fund there. "We had 80 contributors this time. This enabled us to raise our goal $500 above the one we had originally set," he said. A highlight of the drive is that fund supporters in San Francisco were able to be on schedule every week. "The number of contributors is a real sign of the times and what is possible,” Britton stated.

Over the course of the drive seven areas raised their quotas above the ones they had originally set. Kevin Dwire wrote, “We started out with a quota of $2,800, based on what we had done in the past few fund drives. Then we raised it to $3,200 after seeing the response the fund was getting. And then in the final days we ‘had’ to raise it again, to $3,600, as the pledges and payments kept coming. By the end we went over that quota, collecting $3,703. In going over the records, this is the largest amount raised in Boston in two years.”

“I think the response to the fund drive shows the confidence that people attracted to the party have as we respond to the growing economic and political crisis of imperialism,” continued Dwire. “They see the need to support the proletarian party as we use all our tools from the distribution of the Militant, to books by Pathfinder, to our election campaigns to put forward the need for working people to take political power.”

Party-building fund: final results (chart)