Vol. 79/No. 35 October 5, 2015
It’s one example of how members and supporters of the SWP and Communist Leagues in several countries are using the eight-week drive to get the party press and books on working-class politics from Pathfinder Press into the hands of workers in union battles, social protests and on their doorsteps.
As capitalism’s deepening economic and moral crisis and attacks from the bosses, their governments and cops grow, more and more workers are looking to understand why these things are happening and how they can organize themselves independently to fight back effectively.
“At one door in Longview we met a union pipefitter. He and his wife bought a subscription and she got one for her father, who is a union member at KapStone,” Fruit said. “They said working people need to defend themselves against the greed of the bosses.”
Kurt Gallow, the president of the paper workers’ local at KapStone, got a Militant subscription at the local Labor Day picnic. “Though the strike ended, he told us their fight isn’t over,” Fruit said. “They have printed union signs to be put in yards and businesses that support them.”
Members of the Kelso Education Association are on strike after teachers voted to defy a court injunction ordering them to go back to work.
“On Sept. 21 we joined their picket line,” Fruit said. “A teacher who had subscribed to the Militant the previous week got a copy of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform Under Capitalism.”
“The highlight of the first week here was the Sept. 9 demonstration of locked-out meat workers in Wairoa,” a town of 8,400 people seven hours from Auckland, wrote Patrick Brown from New Zealand. “Workers welcomed all those who brought solidarity, and two subscribed to the Militant.
“This week we knocked on doors in Ihumatao, the center of a fight to stop the construction of housing on Maori ancestral land,” Brown said. “An article about that fight served us well in introducing the paper, but it was the broader coverage on the struggles of working people in different countries that convinced four people to subscribe.”
Thirteen participants in the Sept. 19 conference on rail safety in Chicago bought subscriptions. One of them is a driver who transports rail workers to their jobs. Along with the sub he got Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power and New International no. 14.
“He was interested in the article ‘The Clintons’ Antilabor Legacy: Roots of the 2008 World Financial Crisis,’” said Laura Garza, who attended the conference. “I described how it explains what was behind the massive expansion of frame-ups and imprisonment of working people, disproportionately those who are Black, under Clinton’s administration.”
Seven participants in the Asia-Pacific Regional Solidarity Conference with Cuba, held Sept. 8-9 in Hanoi, Vietnam, signed up for the Militant.
“A Vietnamese subscriber liked the positive coverage of the Cuban Revolution and the class struggle in the U.S. and the world,” said Ron Poulsen from the Communist League in Australia, who took part in the conference. “He also bought Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own and Is Socialist Revolution in the U.S. Possible?”
Simultaneous with the subscription drive, the Socialist Workers Party is raising $100,000. Many readers of the Militant, which presents the political views and program of the SWP, will want to contribute to this fund.
“One bus driver made a donation to the Communist League election campaign when he renewed his subscription,” said Michel Dugré from Calgary, Alberta. “We have had several examples like this of people donating to the CL in Canada. They know a paper like the Militant could not exist without a party.”
To join in the effort to reach new readers, contact party organizations listed on page 8.
Related articles:
Socialist Workers Party drive for new readers!
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