Vol. 78/No. 16      April 28, 2014

Militant/Paul Pederson

Ellie García (right), Socialist Workers Party candidate for California governor, shows Militant newspaper to Ana Sagastome while campaigning door to door in Los Angeles April 15. California and Florida SWP gubernatorial candidates are first in party’s tickets across U.S.

In the face of today’s crisis of capitalist production and trade, these ruling classes also face limits on their ability to use military force. The recent mobilizations by working people in Ukraine are a good example of these limits today — on both Washington and Moscow.

One week into the subscription and books campaign, we have 352 new and renewing subscribers.

The heart of the drive is taking the Militant and Pathfinder Press books on revolutionary, working-class politics onto workers’ doorsteps in cities and rural areas.

The campaign is getting a boost as the Socialist Workers Party is fielding candidates for governor and other offices in the elections. The SWP in California announced Ellie García for governor there. Miami socialists are running Naomi Craine for Florida governor.

These campaigns urge independent working-class political action and point a road toward the fight for workers power.

The SWP candidates champion the fight by Ukrainian toilers to defend their country’s sovereignty and are taking advantage of the increased openings to build the fight to free the Cuban Five and discuss the Cuban Revolution they were imprisoned for defending.

García and Craine advance demands for workers control of production in order to defend life and limb, and society, from speedup, dangerous working conditions and threats to the land and environment. They push for government-funded medical care for all in opposition to Obamacare, a system organized to boost profits for insurance and drug companies and to put the burden for health care on individual workers.

The subscription effort has been strengthened by the Militant’s on-the-scene reports from Ukraine and two new Pathfinder books on the fight to free the Cuban Five, I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived and Voices From Prison: The Cuban Five.

Frank Forrestal, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party in Minneapolis who recently participated in the Militant’s reporting trip to Ukraine, spoke at an April 12 Militant Labor Forum in Miami on “Working People from Ukraine to U.S. Defend Themselves Against Bosses’ Offensive.” A bus driver in Palm Beach County originally from Ukraine attended and brought three co-workers.

“He took out a subscription a couple weeks ago and has shown the paper at work,” Naomi Craine reported April 15. “They are in the middle of a contract fight. He took sub blanks to sign up co-workers for the paper.”

Forrestal was invited to speak at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Cooper City, Fla., the next day. Militant supporters put together packages of the four latest issues of the paper with front-page coverage from Ukraine and sold three subscriptions.

“I think people were struck by the Militant having the fight in Ukraine on the front page,” Forrestal said April 16. “They were interested in the internationalist solidarity Ukraine got from Cuba, bringing tens of thousands of young people to the island for medical treatment since the 1986 nuclear explosion in Chernobyl and the fact that Antonio Guerrero, one of the Cuban Five, went to school in Kiev.”

Militant supporters went to the New York City borough of Staten Island April 12, reported Dan Fein, signing up five new subscribers.

“I am from the eastern part of Ukraine and I speak Russian,” said Oksana York, one of the new subscribers, who is originally from Kharkiv. “The people in the east don’t hate the people of the western part and Ukrainian speakers from the west don’t hate the Russian people from the east. That’s a lie the media portrays. We all oppose Russian troops in our country.”

“Vladimir Putin heads a government of oligarchs in Russia who ignored the big protest in Moscow March 15 against Russian troops in Crimea,” Maxim Nikouline, an IT worker originally from Russia, said as he signed up.

“We sold 21 subscriptions and 38 books at a Pathfinder Press booth at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books,” reported Bill Arth from Los Angeles April 15. “A number of new readers took advantage of the special offer to buy books with subscriptions. Some bought several titles. Top sellers were Malcolm X, Black Liberation and the Road to Workers Power with eight copies and The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning with seven.” These are two of 11 books offered at a steep discount with a subscription (see ad below).

“We signed up seven new subscribers at a trailer park in Jordan, Minn., on the first day of the drive,” Joanne Murphy wrote from Minneapolis April 14. “The first woman we talked to got a subscription and three books about the fight to free the Cuban 5. She got extra subscription blanks to hand out at the temp agency she works through.”

“The Militant is our voice, the voice of the workers,” wrote a prisoner in California in an April 14 letter, requesting to keep getting the paper. “Who else tells us about the struggle of our brothers and sisters who are fighting on the streets for better wages? Who else tells us about the protests and actions of the revolutionaries? I enjoy every issue and I always pass it on.”

Nearly 100 inmates in more than 50 prisons across the country subscribe to the Militant.

Join the campaign to expand the Militant’s readership! Sign up for a subscription. If you’re already a subscriber, make sure to renew. Contact a distributor listed on page 8 or the Militant at (212) 244-4899.
 
 
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