The Militant - June 3, 2013 -- Building active workers conference July 19-20

Vol. 77/No. 21 June 3, 2013

Building active workers
conference July 19-20

BY LOUIS MARTIN
With nine weeks to go before a two-day active workers conference opens in Oberlin, Ohio, Fri., July 19, Militant distributors and readers are talking with workers and others engaged in labor struggles, actions in defense of the Cuban Five, and other political activity about participating in the gathering.

Organized by the Socialist Workers Party, the conference will feature talks by party leaders on the world capitalist crisis, working-class politics, and how to build a mass social movement that can chart a course toward the revolutionary fight for workers power.

The talks, as well as classes, will take up lessons from previous revolutionary struggles, including the Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia in 1917, the Cuban Revolution and its weight and place in the world class struggle today, and many other political questions addressed in the pages of the Militant.

Supporters of the communist movement attending the gathering — who help produce the books socialist workers use in their political work, and who help finance the party’s efforts – will meet July 21 to discuss expanding their work.

“For me it’s interesting that there will be people coming from other states. I want to know what they think, what ideas they have, and what they see workers in different parts of the country have in common,” Mario Ottoniel, a construction worker in New York, told the Militant. That’s why he decided to attend the conference, he said.

“I hope there is discussion on how to organize workers like those of us who don’t work in big factories or who work in smaller places like restaurants where there is no union,” Ottoniel added. “How to organize everyone.”

Ottoniel’s and other participants from the U.S. and other countries will take part in discussions, classes, and other activities at the conference. Members of the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, as well as others campaigning for SWP candidates and selling Militant subscriptions, are building the gathering, including discussing how to get time off work, organize transportation and raise money to cover costs.

Coming out of the Militant spring subscription campaign, the conference will discuss the next steps in expanding the circulation of the socialist newsweekly and of books and pamphlets, in many languages, such as The Changing Face of U.S. Politics, Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own, The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning, and others that record experiences of working people the world over yesterday and today.

To learn more, call Militant distributors in your area (see page 10) or contact us at (212) 244-4899 or themilitant@mac.com.

Related articles:
Subscription campaign on target in second week
Spring ‘Militant’ subscription campaign May 4 – June 25 (week 2) (chart)

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