CHICAGO — Socialist Workers Party members and supporters sold 171 books and 42 introductory subscriptions to the Militant, along with 58 single copies, at the annual Printers Row book festival here Sept. 9-10. The booth was one of the busiest, jammed by people checking out our literature, two, sometimes three, deep. People were interested in the Socialist Workers Party alternative in the 2024 elections — Naomi Craine, running for U.S. Congress in the 4th District.
There was a lot of interest in the United Auto Workers strike, as well as labor struggles at UPS and elsewhere. A reflection of this was that five people got copies of Teamster Rebellion, about the rise of the class struggle in the Midwest in the 1930s, and one bought the entire four-volume Teamster series.
A campaign sign at the booth saying “Defend constitutional rights for all! Drop the charges against Trump!” attracted a lot of attention. After a discussion, many thanked us and said that we had given them something to think about. Democratic rights are needed by the working class to use the unions to fight the attacks by the bosses and their government, volunteers explained. Regardless of who they go after today, the rights of working people are the central target of the capitalist rulers.
Several subscribers took advantage of special sales on titles that were discounted heavily with a Militant subscription, picking up 27 books. The top seller was 15 copies 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; followed by 12 copies of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power; nine of The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation; and eight each of Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity and Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution.
Several groups of Chinese students stopped and bought books on China as well as the labor movement and working-class politics in the U.S. The number of Chinese students at colleges in the area has grown recently.