We’re entering the home stretch of the international campaign to extend the readership of the Militant by 1,350; sell a similar number of books by Socialist Workers Party leaders and other revolutionaries; introduce the party’s candidates and its program to meet the capitalist crisis we face; and raise $165,000 to fund production of the paper. Party members and supporters are stepping up efforts to complete the campaign in full and on time. Join in!
SWP members Alex Huinil and Laura Anderson met Yeny Toruno in Miami April 27. She came to the U.S. from Nicaragua.
Toruno was attracted to the photos on the cover of 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. She was interested in the picture of Milagros Rivera, president of the Cuba Solidarity Committee in Puerto Rico, protesting FBI harassment of members of a solidarity brigade they organized to Cuba last summer to show their support for the fight to end Washington’s punishing economic war against the socialist revolution.
“I think all governments are acting the same,” Toruno said, referring to the drive by the capitalist rulers against the rights and living standards of working people. “But we’re still here figuring things out.”
Toruno had worked in a large textile plant in Nicaragua that produces women’s clothing where workers are “paid $20 a week, face speedup and harassment. Today they’re on strike,” she said. She got a Militant subscription and invited party members to come back and talk some more.
SWP election campaigns
SWP candidates and members joined May Day actions around the country. Seth Galinsky, the party’s candidate for New York City Council, participated in two events there.
“Part of what we presented was the need for unions to fight for an amnesty for the millions of immigrants in the U.S. without papers,” he told the Militant. “This is needed to unify working people to take on the bosses’ attacks. It’s tied to organizing and strengthening our unions.
“We also explained that our unions are hamstrung as long as they’re tied to the parties of the capitalist rulers, the Democrats and Republicans,” he said. “We need to use our unions to launch our own party, a labor party that can speak in the interests of all those oppressed and exploited by capitalism. My party’s campaign is raising this class-struggle perspective far and wide.”
Interest in the party’s program was reflected in the 11 subscriptions and 24 books party members sold there.
In Minneapolis, the SWP kicked off its campaign for City Council April 29 with a rally featuring candidates Edwin Fruit and Gabrielle Prosser, who are running in the 1st and 11th wards respectively.
“Our campaign explains that all politics is class against class,” Fruit said, “not red vs. blue, nor conservative vs. liberal. We point to what is in the interest of the working class and other exploited toilers, whether they work the land, drive trucks or own small businesses.”
Before the rally, Fruit attended a meeting protesting arson attacks on two mosques. A fire was started in a restroom at the Masjid Omar Islamic Center April 23; the next day a fire on the third floor attached to the Masjid Al Rahma Mosque forced the evacuation of 40 children from a day care center in the building.
Fruit delivered a solidarity message calling on workers, farmers and all defenders of democratic right to condemn these attacks, as well as the recent antisemitic graffiti targeting Temple Israel in Minneapolis.
To join the effort to expand the reach of the Militant, to get out the books, win support for the SWP campaign and to contribute to the fund, contact the nearest SWP branch. Donations to the fund can also be made online at themilitant.com.
Kevin Dwire in Minneapolis contributed to this article.
