“You should go talk to the Murphys. They are very outspoken about the train derailment disaster here,” Tish McDevitt, a greenhouse worker in East Palestine, Ohio, told Socialist Workers Party members who were bringing solidarity and covering the response of working people to the disaster there caused by Norfolk Southern rail bosses and the government. “You’ll know their place by the big Trump and American flags at the driveway.”
“Socialists? What the heck, come on in,” Russ Murphy said, answering the door after Candace Wagner and Steve Zamboni, both rail workers, introduced themselves. “First of all, what’s this socialism?” he asked.
“We’re a working-class party that acts on the fact that if there is to be a future for humanity, the working class in an alliance with working farmers need to lead a revolution to take power and build a society for human needs, not profits for a minority,” Wagner said. Zamboni added, “We explain that the Democratic and Republican parties are the parties of the ruling rich. We need a labor party, based on our unions.”
Both Russ Murphy and his wife, Linda, liked the paper’s defense of constitutional rights, reported Wagner, and were interested in learning more about the Cuban Revolution.
“I know nothing about Cuba, except what the U.S. government tells us,” Linda Murphy said. Zamboni answered, “Big business and their government hate this revolution because it’s an example for us all over the world. In Cuba, workers and farmers did what is needed here, they took political power into their own hands.”
The Murphys signed up for an introductory subscription to the Militant and purchased The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by SWP leaders Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark. They both expressed interest in getting back together again for more discussion.
Party members have been using the Militant to campaign in support of efforts by workers and farmers in East Palestine to take control over the cleanup and rebuilding of the area, and of their lives.
Discussions like this on workers’ doorsteps in cities, towns and rural areas, as well as on picket lines and at anti-war and other social protest actions, and with co-workers, are part of an international spring campaign by members of the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and United Kingdom. Through these efforts they plan to expand the reach of the Militant by getting 1,350 subscriptions, selling 1,350 books by SWP and other revolutionary leaders and raising $165,000 for the Militant Fighting Fund.
SWP international conference
They are discussing the importance of the upcoming June 8-11 International Educational Conference sponsored by the Socialist Workers Party to be held at Oberlin College in Ohio. At this gathering, SWP and CL members and other workers, unionists and young people will be discussing the big shifts in U.S. and world politics unfolding today, the party’s program, its Marxist continuity and the working-class road forward.
This course is explained in the new Pathfinder book The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us. Getting this book into the hands of as many working people as possible is at the center of the spring campaign. Ten other titles are also on special with subscriptions to the Militant (see ad below). All Pathfinder titles are at 20% discount during the campaign.
Communist League members Annette Kouri and Katy LeRougetel spoke with retired truck driver Daniel Hudon at his home in Montreal-East. The area has been the site of community opposition to refinery bosses’ pollution for years. LeRougetel pointed to recent protests in the northern Quebec town of Rouyn-Noranda against arsenic emissions from Glencore’s copper foundry there.
“We have the same problem,” Hudon responded. “Here it smells like hell sometimes. Wednesdays, when the refinery burns the garbage, you can’t see the stars.”
Rail workers, residents act together
Kouri pointed to the actions by rail workers and residents in East Palestine, where in response to the rail derailment and release of toxic vinyl chloride, they forced Norfolk Southern to rip up its tracks to remove the contaminated soil. “They won some ground because they organized together,” she said.
Hudon expressed interest in the fight being waged by working people in Ohio and by rail workers in North America. He described how a nearby paper company “spent $72 million on an anti-pollution system. It works, but what’s really killing people are the 12-hour shifts.” And long distance truck drivers often work well over 12 hours a day, he said. Hudon took the French-language Militant article on the actions of working people in East Palestine.
To join in the effort, contact distributors listed in the directory.
