CHICAGO — Participants in this year’s Printers Row book fair here bought 108 books, some $1,450, at the Pathfinder Books table Sept. 11-12. The top sellers were Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power and Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes; Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters; Tribunes of the People and the Trade Unions; The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels; and Abortion Is a Woman’s Right! by Pat Grogan and Evelyn Reed.
The large attractive display of Pathfinder books became a center of political discussion at the fair. There was wide interest in the fight for women’s right to be able to choose abortion and against the draconian new anti-abortion law in Texas. Titles on women’s rights sold out quickly. More have been ordered to be on hand for the Oct. 2 march here against the Texas law.
Many at the fair were interested in hearing about the strike picket lines of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union at Nabisco and the strike of hundreds of auto mechanics throughout Chicago by International Association of Machinists Local 701.
A number of young people signed up to keep in touch with the Socialist Workers Party. Twenty-seven got subscriptions to the Militant, and dozens signed up to get more information on the party’s activities. The next week, five people who had met the SWP at the book table came to a Militant Labor Forum on “Afghanistan: The Weakening of U.S. Imperialism, Why the Working Class Needs Its Own Foreign Policy.”