Vol. 79/No. 18 May 18, 2015
“As we marched and chanted, we all discussed the cumulative impact of the protests and how we can make a difference,” Trowe told the Militant. “The whole city is in a dialogue, it goes on hour after hour, day after day. You act together and talk together, and people ask ‘Who are you?’ and they tell you what they’ve been doing and thinking.”
“I talked to Leigh Nicholas and Zoe Buckwater from Temple University in Philadelphia,” she said. “They have a group on campus called $15 Now. They came to Baltimore because they see the fight against cop brutality and for a raise in the minimum wage as part of the same fight. Leigh got a subscription, read the paper, then we talked some more. We plan to stay in touch and continue to build the fight together.”
“When Kizzier, Nicholas, Buckwater and others asked who we were, we explained my campaign and about the Militant,” Trowe said. “They were among a number of protesters we met who decided they wanted to subscribe. Kizzier also took advantage of the offer for new readers to get any book published by Pathfinder Press at half price and chose Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack Barnes.”
“People want to figure out how we can win, what the connection is between capitalism and racism and between the labor movement and the fight against racism,” Trowe said. “We learn from what we accomplished here in Baltimore and take it with us to the next one. There are meetings and discussions and actions taking place across the country.”
“Freddie Gray didn’t have to die or be treated less than human. This march is putting attention back on what happened to him and against those who call protesters animals and thugs,” Aurora Winninger, a 21-year-old home health care worker, told Arlene Rubinstein at a demonstration of more than 1,000 people in Baltimore April 29. Rubinstein had come with a group from Washington, D.C., to join the march.
“I hooked up with Winninger and marched with her friends, including Elise Heroux, who works at a huge Amazon fulfillment center in a closed General Motors plant,” Rubinstein said. “‘Amazon has a history of mistreating workers,’ Heroux told me. ‘We work 11-hour shifts and there is no access to water and not enough bathrooms.’ Heroux has lived in Baltimore for 10 years and said, ‘What I have witnessed at the hands of the police taught me that they are gangs that rule these neighborhoods.’”
Winninger decided to take out a subscription to the Militant, Rubinstein said. “I called her the next day and she had already read it. ‘This paper is awesome,’ she said.”
Josefina Otero joined an April 29 United Steelworkers rally at Marathon Petroleum’s headquarters in Findlay, Ohio, in support of oil workers on strike at the company’s facility in Texas City, Texas. In the course of the protest, three workers signed up for subscriptions and another renewed for six months.
The annual Militant Fighting Fund drive makes it possible to get the paper out with the low introductory subscription offer of $5 for 12 weeks. Workers who have read the paper and come to appreciate it are the backbone of the fund.
“We got $200 from a new contributor last week when he renewed,” Dan Fein reported from Chicago May 4. “He got a subscription a while back at one of the rallies in St. Louis against the cop killing of Michael Brown.”
Join in taking the Militant to social protests, labor actions and working-class neighborhoods, and please make a generous contribution. Contact the distributors listed on page 8.
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