Vol. 79/No. 37 October 19, 2015
A team from Washington, D.C., went to Steelton, Pennsylvania, just outside Harrisburg, where there’s an old Bethlehem Steel mill now owned by ArcelorMittal. “We went door to door on three different streets and sold five subscriptions,” reports Ned Measel. “We didn’t run into any steelworkers, but sold a paper to the wife and daughter of a worker from the mill.”
“One of the new subscribers is a retired paperworker who is Puerto Rican,” Measel said. “He also took some flyers to show his pastor for the Nov. 7 meeting with Kenia Serrano in Washington.” (See details on the upcoming visit to the U.S. by Serrano, president of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, on page 7.)
On Oct. 10 SWP members and others from around the East Coast will take part in the “Justice or Else” march in Washington. Called by the Nation of Islam on the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March, the event has been broadly built among those involved in struggles against police brutality, frame-ups and incarceration. It will be a good opportunity to meet young fighters who will be interested in the revolutionary program of the party, presented in the Militant and books from Pathfinder.
Several of these books are on special for those who subscribe. Nicholas Romak, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Morris, Illinois, took advantage of this to get Teamster Politics along with a subscription. The book is the third in a four-book series by Farrell Dobbs, a central leader of the labor battles that forged the Teamsters as a fighting union in Minneapolis and the Upper Midwest in the 1930s. It describes the fight to carry out an independent working-class political course, including the need for workers to break politically from the bosses and organize our own labor party — a timely question for today.
Alyson Kennedy talked to Romak on his doorstep. She said he identified with the campaign against the Canadian government’s frame-up of railroad workers for the Lac-Mégantic oil train disaster.
“The companies blame labor when they are the ones who do everything to increase their profits,” Romak said. “I was working as a contractor at ExxonMobil when the company told us we have to take a pay cut or they would get rid of us. I brought the issue to the union but nothing was done.” He quit, and was out of work for more than a month.
“Morris is a rural town west of Chicago, where there are a lot of gigantic warehouses owned by Walmart, Costco and others,” Kennedy said. “We plan to go back to that area next weekend.”
We’ve had to raise the goal for subscriptions from prisoners; in just four weeks we’ve gotten two new readers and 12 renewals from workers behind bars. The newspaper often gets passed around once it gets within prison walls. Many of those renewing include a note. “Militant newspaper is very informative to population here at this institution,” says one reader from Pennsylvania. “Please keep up the great reporting.”
“I would like an article on Florida not having parole for its prisoners, when a majority of other states offer parole,” says a subscriber incarcerated there.
To join in the subscription effort, contact the party organization nearest you (see list on page 8).