The Militant - June 10, 2013 -- Hundreds to attend active workers conference in July

Vol. 77/No. 22 June 10, 2013

Hundreds to attend active workers conference in July

BY LOUIS MARTIN
“I have been participating in weekly classes on The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions along with members of the Socialist Workers Party in Los Angeles. Studying together makes a big difference,” said Kevin Cole, a postal worker and member of the American Postal Workers Union in Anaheim, Calif., explaining why he was looking forward to an active workers conference organized by the SWP July 19-20 in Oberlin, Ohio.

The book was written by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, who will be giving the main political presentation at the conference.

“The reports and discussions at the conference will deepen our understanding of what the working class faces,” Cole said, “and how we can organize to defend ourselves and resist the bosses’ attacks.”

Cole has been selling the Militant door to door and at workers protests for almost a year. He traveled to St. Louis April 29 to march with United Mine Workers of America members in their fight against Patriot Coal’s union-busting effort. “The fact that an industrial union is involved in a real struggle is significant for all workers,” he said.

The conference will draw together workers and others involved in labor battles or solidarity with them, actions to free the Cuban Five, protests against police brutality and other political activity. The presentations and classes will focus on lessons of previous working-class struggles for political power and the involvement of millions of working people as they organize to maintain that power through the rapid and decisive transformation of social relations inherited from capitalism — transforming themselves in the process.

Along with workers who have recently started reading the Militant, participants will include members of the SWP and Communist Leagues from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and supporters of the communist movement who organize the production of books by Pathfinder Press and play a big role in financing the work of the Socialist Workers Party.

The conference will discuss increasing the readership of the Militant, as well as the leverage of books distributed by Pathfinder Press in nearly a dozen languages in expanding the reach of revolutionary working-class politics — from the U.S. to Greece, from Burkina Faso to Afghanistan, from Indonesia to China.

To learn more, call Militant distributors in your area (see page 8) or contact us at (212) 244-4899 or themilitant@mac.com.

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