“None of the politicians care about working-class people,” office worker Bernadette Keating told Communist League member Ögmundur Jónsson when he knocked on her door in Manchester, England, April 23. “Not just the government, but the others as well. We need a new party to shake things up.” She was glad to hear the CL is running Peter Clifford, a member of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, for Manchester City Council in the May 4 elections.
“The CL’s campaign is a voice for workers’ struggles,” Jónsson said. Workers need to break from the Conservative, Labour and all the other capitalist parties, he said. “We need to build our own party of labor, based on our unions.
“It would speak and act for the interests of the working class and all the oppressed,” he said. “That starts on the picket line today, with workers using and strengthening our unions.”
Keating decided to get a copy of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward and a Militant subscription. “This is a real paper,” she said. When Jónsson explained the Militant is funded entirely by its working-class readers, Keating kicked in 7 pounds ($8) for the Militant Fighting Fund.
Exchanges like this are taking place from New York to Los Angeles, London to Sydney, as members of the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom expand the reach of the paper and books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries. And raise contributions to guarantee the paper comes out every week.
We knock on doors in workers’ neighborhoods, at farms and homes in rural areas, go to strike picket lines, protests against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and repression in Iran, rallies against Jew-hatred and attacks on immigrant workers, and more. We set up tables at events like the Festival of Books in Los Angeles, reported on above.
Party members find interest when they explain all political questions should be viewed through the lens of the unending struggle between the working class and the capitalist class. On the way they’re finding interest in the party’s International Educational Conference set for Oberlin, Ohio, June 8-11.
The goal is to sell 1,350 subscriptions to the Militant, the same number of books on revolutionary working-class politics and to raise $165,000 for the Militant Fighting Fund by May 16.
Contributions come from workers who think the paper’s coverage is crucial to building solidarity with today’s class battles as are its articles on examples we can learn from, like the socialist revolutions in Cuba in 1959 and Russia in 1917. With three weeks to go, $86,766 has been contributed.
Along with his contribution, Militant reader John Martinez sent a note saying he “just re-read Farrell Dobbs’ Teamster series. Powerful.” The four books are some of the titles on special offer with a subscription. In Teamster Bureaucracy, Martinez says, “Dobbs identifies the workers and their unions that stood up to President Franklin Roosevelt and to the FBI, fought for workers’ rights and against the imperialist war drive. The scope and speed of these developments take your breath away.”
To help get out the Militant and books that point the road forward, or to contribute to the fund, contact the SWP or CL branch nearest you.