Efforts by members of the Socialist Workers Party are underway to maximize the reach of the presidential campaign of Rachele Fruit for president and Dennis Richter for vice president, win hundreds of new readers to the Militant, sell 1,300 books by party leaders and other revolutionaries, and raise $140,000 to further the party’s work. Anyone who wants to join us is welcome — contact the party campaign headquarters nearest you!
The first week of the campaign was marked by the twin strike battles at Boeing and on the docks, as well as nationwide protests by postal workers. Everywhere fighting workers welcomed the Militant’s coverage and support for their battles. Many were attracted to the paper’s coverage of today’s labor struggles, the fight to defend Israel as a refuge from Jew-hatred and pogroms, Ukrainian workers’ battle to defend their national sovereignty, and the party’s presidential campaign.
Laura Anderson reports from Miami that campaigners got a warm welcome from many of the 60 postal workers picketing the main post office there Oct. 1. Some said they remember the paper from delivering it to subscribers. Two got subscriptions and six others got the latest issue.
At Atlanta’s main post office, three pickets got subscriptions, and one bought Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs and The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark.
Every ILA local in Texas turned out for a picket of several hundred Oct. 2 at the Seabrook Bayport Terminal outside Houston, Alyson Kennedy reported. The local president of ILA Local 1504 from a warehouse in Galveston got a six-month subscription to the Militant, as well as Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes. Both were for his local, which has a substantial Black membership.
At an ILA action the day before, two introductory subscriptions were sold to union members and two for six months to ILA locals. One worker got the Spanish edition of Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning Under Capitalism, also by Barnes.
Socialist Workers Party candidates were invited to speak at a number of strike actions. Dennis Richter, the party’s candidate for vice president, spoke at a barbecue organized by striking Prelco workers in Montreal. And James Harris, the SWP candidate for Congress in Washington, D.C., spoke at the postal workers’ rally there.
Party members and supporters in Los Angeles joined a rally of a couple hundred in front of City Hall Sept. 23 organized by Local 11 of UNITE HERE that demanded the city guarantee a minimum wage of $25 for all workers employed in the tourist industry ahead of the 2028 Olympics here. They also campaigned at a Sept. 28 demonstration of 300 hosted by United Teachers Los Angeles calling for steps to assure affordable housing for city workers. Participants bought 11 Militant subscriptions and 17 books.
The international campaign began Sept. 21 and will continue for eight weeks through Nov. 18, after the 2024 elections are over. Printed here are the goals adopted by SWP branches and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Next week’s chart will include where the drive is at.
A key part of the effort is to win endorsers for the SWP’s Fruit-Richter ticket from workers and others who want to join in getting out the party’s call for building a party of labor to organize working people in their millions to take political power into their own hands.
This week Fruit will be touring in Minneapolis and then in Seattle, to bring solidarity to strikers at Boeing. Richter will be in Oakland.
