You can join us to make 2016 SWP Party-Building Fund!

BY EMMA JOHNSON

The drive to raise $100,000 for the Socialist Workers Party-Building Fund is going into its final three weeks with $54,387 collected so far. The challenge now is to get the final pledges and payments in by the Dec. 7 deadline.

Talking with workers door to door across the country, party members find an eagerness for discussion about how the capitalist crisis is affecting working people, what the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections will mean for the working class and to learn more about the SWP.

Many decide to get books about the party’s program and subscriptions to the Militant newspaper. And some kick in a donation to help the work of the SWP.

In Seattle, party members picked up several contributions of $5, $10 and $25 on workers’ doorsteps over the past few weeks. Colleen Malone and her daughter Kelly both decided to contribute after inviting party member John Naubert in for a discussion Nov. 9.

Colleen Malone works in a center for homeless people and had signed up for a one-year Militant subscription when SWP members went door to door in her neighborhood in Kent, Washington, earlier this year.

“We were just talking about the election,” she told Naubert. “It was shocking. How could people vote for Trump after his offensive statements about women and immigrants?”

“Both Clinton and Trump represent the ruling rich,” Naubert said. “What is most offensive is what is happening to the working class. They try to divert us from seeing that it’s the working people of the world who carry the burdens of capitalism’s global economic and social disasters and spreading wars.”

“So what can we do about it?” asked Kelly Malone, who said she has to work two jobs to pay the bills.

“We have to build a movement capable of replacing their system with a workers and farmers government,” Naubert said. “It will take a deep-going social revolution and to get there we need a program in the interests of working people and a working-class party that will fight for it. We think it’s very important to talk with workers about all these issues and to introduce the SWP as that kind of party.”

In addition to contributing to the party-building fund, Colleen and Kelly decided to get Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters, and The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record: Why Washington Fears Working People by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, to learn more about the SWP and its program.

Joel Britton in Oakland, California, reported Nov. 15 that the party there has set a goal of getting $150 in contributions going door to door. Most of the $57 they have gotten so far has come at the initiative of the workers they’ve met.

“I’m talking about it more myself now. Yesterday refinery worker Ben Fields and I talked for some time with an industrial worker on his porch in Concord,” Britton said. “He appreciated the discussion and said, ‘Thanks for listening to what I had to say.’ I asked if he would like to make a contribution to the work of the SWP. He went right back inside and returned with $8 ‘for the cause.’”

Along with weekly voluntary sustainer pledges from members, the annual party-building fund is a cornerstone in meeting the party’s budget. To join in getting contributions to the fund or to give a donation yourself, contact the SWP in your area, listed on page 8.

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