Vol. 80/No. 4      February 1, 2016

 

Volunteers boost reach of revolutionary books

 
Volunteers in 16 cities across the United States and Canada put hundreds of Pathfinder books about revolutionary working-class politics onto bookstore, library and museum shelves, and into college classrooms, during an Aug. 22 through Dec. 31 sales effort.

Volunteers placed 110 orders, going over their goal of 100. Special emphasis was put on Pathfinder’s new edition of Teamster Politics and its new book Política Teamster, winning 38 orders for books in the four-volume Teamsters series, which also includes Teamster Rebellion, Teamster Power and Teamster Bureaucracy. Written by Farrell Dobbs, the books recount the powerful story — with many useful lessons for today — of Teamster union battles in the Upper Midwest and the role of the Socialist Workers Party in helping to lead them.

“We found real interest in the Teamster series given the economic crisis and the fight for $15 an hour and a union unfolding today,” said New York City volunteer Gale Shangold, who helped lead the effort.

Sales volunteers found that longtime customers and new buyers alike commented on how Pathfinder’s catalogue would appeal to those involved in labor resistance and social struggles, like the fight against police brutality.

Volunteers in Oakland, California, visited a university library buyer they met at the American Library Association summer convention. “Our acquisitions department will place an order directly with you all for The Cuban Revolution in World Politics,” she told them after their meeting. This is a series of 29 books written by its leaders that provide firsthand accounts of a revolution that continues to change the course of history.

At an appointment with a college librarian in Olympia, Washington, Scott Breen from Seattle showed her all 14 issues of New lnternational, a magazine of Marxist politics and theory. She ordered the entire set in addition to a number of Pathfinder titles.

Volunteers staffed Pathfinder booths at a number of national and regional conferences. An Arizona professor who attended the annual African Studies Association convention in San Diego purchased for classroom use 44 copies of February 1965: The Final Speeches by Malcolm X.

Volunteers in Montreal set up a table at the yearly Salon du livre and sold 33 books, including five New Internationals and four copies of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power.

Baker & Taylor, a major wholesaler that distributes Pathfinder titles to bookstores and libraries, listed two dozen Pathfinder titles in a special fall marketing program called “Shelf Worthy.” Included were Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power; Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own; Absolved by Solidarity: 16 Watercolors for 16 years of Unjust Imprisonment of the Cuban Five; Teamster Politics; Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution; The Jewish Question; and three New Internationals.

The Jewish Question was written by Abram Leon, a Belgian revolutionary executed by the Nazis at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. It describes the social history of the Jews and how in times of social crisis Jew-hatred is incited by the propertied rulers to deflect attention from how their crisis is rooted in the workings of the capitalist system while they mobilize reactionary forces against the working-class movement.

Volunteers are preparing promotional materials and organizing visits to bring in Pathfinder orders for Black History Month in February. A special feature is the upcoming Pathfinder book “It’s the Poor Who Face the Savagery of the US ‘Justice’ System”: The Cuban Five Talk About Their Lives in the US Working Class (see excerpts on page 7). The book will be available Feb. 1.

Also in the works is a spring 2016 sales effort, which will feature the new book along with Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power and The Jewish Question.  
 
 
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