Vol. 74/No. 19      May 17, 2010

New York I
More than 20 workers at a big meatpacking plant on Long Island have bought Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power and subscriptions to the Militant. While reading the book, some have been eager to discuss it.

A worker originally from the Dominican Republic read a selection from the book’s introduction in Spanish to several other workers during break: “The ruling families of the United States and other capitalist countries dictate, and will continue to dictate, the use of whatever degree of state power is necessary to defend and advance their own class interests” and “will continue to do so regardless of the toll on many hundreds of millions the world over.”

The worker stopped and emphasized, “This is true.”

He also said that Barack Obama was a capitalist politician, representing only the rich, like the politicians he and several other workers knew from the Dominican Republic. He said he had been reading about this in the new book.

—Stu Singer

New York II
Over the first two weeks on the job in two large factories here, communist workers have sold to coworkers three copies of the new Pathfinder book Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, by Jack Barnes. Two copies were sold in a large pharmaceutical plant, and one in an electronic components plant, where two copies of New International no. 6 have also been sold, which features the article “The Second Assassination of Maurice Bishop.”

This article describes the workers and farmers government led by Bishop that came to power through a revolution in March 1979 and its overthrow four years later by a counterrevolutionary faction within the ruling New Jewel Movement. The two coworkers who bought the New International are from Grenada. Both have expressed interest in the Workers Power book as well.

—Maura DeLuca

Chicago
“I was just thinking about Malcolm X,” said a flight attendant and union activist who bought Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power along with a subscription to the Militant from a team going door to door in the Black community of Southside Chicago. “I need to read more about him. This will be my reading on my next flight.”

She added, “The problem is working people don’t know our own power. The rich can’t grow rich without our labor; we produce everything for them.”

Militant supporters have sold more than 10 books in this area by 95th and State Street, most of them with Militant subscriptions.

At the Latino Book and Family Festival here nine copies of the book were sold along with six subscriptions to the Militant.

Sales of the book have also included half a dozen on the job at three workplaces—a large meatpacking company, a smaller provisioning house, and a plastic injection molding plant where a Militant supporter whose first language is Spanish sold one each in English and Spanish.

—Laura Anderson and John Hawkins
 
 
Related articles:
Readership drive poised to exceed int’l goal
Campaign to sell 'Workers Power' with 'Militant' subscriptions (chart)  
 
 
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