Editor of the Militant
The Militant is urging its readers to join us in stepping up efforts to expand the reach of the paper. Get the Militant into the hands of your co-workers and other workers you know.
To maximize our ability to get the paper out broadly to workers, farmers and youth — all over the world — join us in raising contributions for an immediate $115,000 fund we are launching. This will allow us to strengthen our efforts to get out news of the struggles being waged by workers and farmers to protect themselves during the intertwined economic, social and health crises we face today.
This is the time to act!
Now more than ever workers need to work together on the job, to strengthen ourselves in the face of the employers’ attacks and to gain confidence in our capacities to act together. Since it was first published in 1928 the Militant has been a vital voice for working-class struggles, building solidarity, and for needed discussions about how workers can fight most effectively.
As millions of workers are being thrown out of work, millions more are still on the job, looking for a way to stand up to the bosses. Supporters of the Militant are getting it into the hands of other workers wherever they can, deepening discussions about a working-class road forward.
They are using the Socialist Workers Party’s call to action for workers to organize and demand the government act now to protect working people. The call is reprinted in this issue and the demands in it are highlighted on the front page.
The paper gives voice to workers’ fights — like that waged by packinghouse workers in Georgia featured in this issue. And like the fight by Walmart workers in Los Angeles who won the right of cashiers to have stools and to sit down as they worked. At a Walmart store in the Washington, D.C., area a worker wrote out a petition on a piece of cardboard that workers circulated demanding bosses fix the broken sink in the break room so workers could wash their hands. They won that fight too.
Every fight on the job around wages and working conditions is important. The more workers learn about each other’s struggles, the more our self-confidence can grow.
Send in reports of your experiences on the job and in discussions with fellow workers! Help make the paper a lively and concrete source of information about working-class struggles today.
Couple this with introducing people to books by Socialist Workers Party leaders on special offer. These include The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party and Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, both by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, and Tribunes of the People and the Trade Unions.. Also Red Zone: Cuba and the Battle Against Ebola in West Africa by Enrique Ubieta Gómez, is a timely book that describes how the Cuban Revolution prepared workers and farmers there to offer support worldwide to those battling the scourge of the Ebola virus.
These titles explain what is behind the deepening crisis of capitalism we confront. They draw on decades of experiences of the working-class movement and of revolutionary struggles. They explain how the only way working people can get the lash of the bosses off our back once and for all is organizing to overthrow the rule of the exploiting capitalist class, and replace it with our own workers and farmers government and changing ourselves in the process. These books describe how the kind of party necessary to do that can be built through our struggles, as well as the fact that there is an example we can look to in the 1959 revolution made by Cuban workers and farmers that stands strong today.
The Militant is a voice of uncompromising opposition to the punishing sanctions Washington imposes on the people of Cuba, as well as Venezuela and Iran. And to the imperialist wars the U.S. rulers continue to wage in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Join in getting ‘Militant’ around
As the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, the capitalist rulers worldwide have responded with efforts to defend their profit-driven system of exploitation. They’re increasingly imposing far-reaching lockdowns that make it more difficult for workers to organize to protect ourselves.
The Militant intends to continue publishing every week, and, with your help, aims to increase its circulation.
Many smaller papers, weeklies and others, are being forced to stop publication or retreat to the web. Their crisis is built on the fact that the provision of news under the profit system means that most media are dependent on advertising revenue. Because of the effects of the shutdowns, much of that advertising — especially from smaller businesses that are also shut down — is drying up.
The Militant doesn’t seek advertising. The bedrock of the paper’s financing is our readers, who value its honest and forthright working-class coverage. They make sure it gets around and as they do so they seek contributions from others to assure its continuing publication.
Redouble your efforts!
The Militant reports on the discussions our readers are having today and their response to the SWP’s call to action. Malcolm Jarrett, the SWP’s candidate for vice president, and other supporters of the Militant spoke with 24-year-old Christian Canela. Jarrett asked him what he thought about the federal government plan to send some workers a $1,000 check to help tide them by.
“That’s nothing,” Canela said.
“Exactly,” Jarrett replied. “That’s why workers need to demand the government provide weekly unemployment benefits to everyone who is out of work.” Canela and his mother bought a copy of the Militant.
Alyson Kennedy, the party’s presidential candidate, spoke to Debora Ortiz in New York’s Harlem neighborhood. Ortiz said her employer had sent her home from work, and said she will continue to get paid “for now.” Many other workers are not so lucky.
Ortiz said she was surprised to learn from Kennedy that there were no unemployment benefits available for workers at the start of the 1930s Depression. This was only won by sizable struggles by unions and organizations of the unemployed that forced the government to extend some relief.
Kennedy showed Ortiz the call to action, and its demand “that the government provide immediate jobless benefits for all workers, farmers and other exploited producers, for as long as they need it! Weekly unemployment relief that working people can depend on — not just a one-time check in the mail that falls far short of what is needed.”
“We can make the federal government do these things, including the immediate measures to defend working people that we’re demanding,” Kennedy said, “but only if workers join together to fight for them.” Join in the Militant’s effort to expand our readership, and the reach of books by SWP leaders. Contribute as generously as you can to the $115,000 fund, and ask others to join you.
You can contribute online at themilitant.com or mail a check or money order, made out to the Militant, to 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor, New York, NY 10018.