Vol. 79/No. 33 September 21, 2015
Members and supporters of the SWP participating in Labor Day activities got a similar response to the party’s press across the country, giving a solid start to the drive to win new readers to the Militant. Well over 200 new subscribers signed up in the first three days. This eight-week effort, which runs through Nov. 3, has a goal of winning 2,300 new and renewing readers.
“I came here today to find more people wanting to fight,” said Ira Dorsey, a Checkers restaurant worker who is part of the “Fight for $15” campaign. He was one of a dozen participants who subscribed to the Militant.
Staggs spoke with members of Transport Workers Union Local 234 he knew from his previous job at Hyundai. One of them, Zeke Hernandez, joined in campaigning among the union contingents. “I support the idea of a labor party — that’s a good idea!” he told Staggs. “We have the unions already, so why not take that step now?”
Twenty workers signed up for the Militant at Labor Day actions in Chicago and Lowell, Indiana. Ella Knox, a member of Steelworkers Local 1010 at ArcelorMittal, was impressed with the Militant’s coverage of the 60th anniversary of the lynching of Emmett Till, whose death was a catalyst for the rise of the fight to end racial segregation in the 1950s and early ’60s. “I was born in 1956 in Mississippi about 25 miles from where Till was murdered,” she said. Till’s killing and the response to it had an impact on her growing up.
Socialist Workers Party members in Washington state joined three Labor Day actions, including a farmworkers rally in Burlington and a union-sponsored picnic in Castle Rock, near Longview. “Discussions there and in the community were marked by the recent strike by paperworkers at KapStone and other labor struggles,” said John Naubert. “At the three events and going door to door in working-class neighborhoods, we signed up 17 new Militant readers.”
Party members and supporters took part in the Days of Grace march in Charleston, South Carolina, Sept. 5, carrying SWP placards reading, “Black Lives Matter,” “For a Labor Party based on the unions” and “Oppose attacks on immigrants.” The march and rally, followed by a two-day conference, was organized by International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1422. Participants included relatives of the nine people killed by a white supremacist at Emmanuel AME Church June 17 and of Walter Scott, shot in the back by a Charleston cop April 4, as well as unionists and members of area churches.
In the course of discussions and debates at the march and conference, 30 people subscribed to the Militant, and 20 books on revolutionary working-class politics were sold.
Elise Cromwell, a nurse recently fired by the Medical University of South Carolina, told Maggie Trowe at the march, “Management told me I had a pattern of being disrespectful and discourteous.” The real reason was her support for Healthcare Workers United, she said. She got a subscription to the paper.
Maeve Harrington, a college student in upstate New York, got a subscription and several booklets at the conference, including The Communist Manifesto and The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning. “She and her friend said they never learned anything in school that they were being exposed to at the conference,” said Rachele Fruit. “She grew up believing Cuba was a dictatorship and now wants to learn the truth about the Cuban Revolution.”
To join the effort and Socialist Workers Party fund drive, contact a party branch near you. (See listing on page 8.)
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Join Socialist Workers Party drive to raise $100,000
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