Vol. 78/No. 15      April 21, 2014

This effort is strengthened by the Militant’s on-the-scene reports from Ukraine and two new Pathfinder Press books: I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived and Voices From Prison: The Cuban Five that demonstrate the dignity and working-class integrity of the Five.

Subscribers can also choose from a wide range of books on revolutionary, working-class politics at reduced prices. (See ad on page 3).

Frank Forrestal and other Militant supporters participated in a cultural event at the Ukrainian Center in Minneapolis attended by 50 people April 6. Forrestal was a member of the Militant’s recent reporting team to Ukraine.

“We talked to several people at the Minnesota Maidan table, including two of the main organizers,” writes Forrestal. “We showed them the paper’s coverage over the past few weeks. Both got subscriptions. We also showed them Voices From Prison and explained who the Cuban Five are. We talked about Antonio Guerrero’s schooling in Kiev and Cuba’s internationalist response to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.”

Guerrero, one of the Five, studied at the University of Kiev in Ukraine, graduating in civil engineering in 1983. Since 1990 Cuba has provided free health treatment at the Pediatric Hospital in Tarará outside Havana to some 25,000 children who were victims of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine.

I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived reprints 15 watercolors by Guerrero that depict the first 17 months of the five revolutionaries’ imprisonment in Miami. In Voices From Prison, the Five, their family members and fellow prisoners talk about how the U.S. criminal “justice” system is set up to dehumanize and break working people.

“My son got in an altercation and was charged with assault,” Kimberley Irving in Federal Way, Wash., told Edwin Fruit and Jeanne FitzMaurice when they knocked on her door with the Militant April 6. “The cops beat him and threw him in jail. One lawyer took $10,000 from us and told us he could get my son 18 years in prison with a plea bargain. Another lawyer said he could get eight years, which my son agreed to. He didn’t want to go to trial because the prosecutor said he could get 30 years. This system is especially bad for Blacks and other minorities and needs to be changed.”

Irving bought a subscription and Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, one of the books on special offer.

From London, Ólöf Andra Proppé reported April 6 that on the first day of the drive supporters visited the west London neighborhood of Greenford, following up with recent subscribers as part of going door to door in the area. Three readers signed up for renewals and eight people got new subscriptions.

“This discussion we’re having now and the reporting in the Militant is changing my opinion on what is happening in Ukraine,” Thomas Simi told them as he renewed his subscription. Simi is originally from the Ivory Coast and works in a medical research center in the city. “I didn’t know working people are so involved in the struggles there or about the history of national oppression by Russia.”

At a protest of 50 the following day in defense of Ukrainian sovereignty outside the Russian Embassy, participants picked up two subscriptions and 22 copies of the Militant.

“One participant also got Lenin’s Final Fight,” Proppé wrote. “All in all we sold 12 new subscriptions and five renewals April 4-5. We also sold two copies of I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived and one Voices From Prison.

“We started the weekend with a sale at a meatpacking plant,” Jacquie Henderson wrote from Omaha, Neb. “We made a sign in Spanish and English in defense of workers in Ukraine and built upcoming showings of Guerrero’s watercolor paintings scheduled in Omaha and Lincoln.”

To join in the campaign, get a subscription or renew, contact a distributor listed on page 8 or call the Militant at (212) 244-4899.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home