As Socialist Workers Party candidates are getting a real hearing, members of the party and Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom are heading toward the successful completion of the eight-week spring campaign to win 1,300 new Militant subscribers, sell 1,300 books by SWP and other revolutionary leaders and raise $165,000 for the Militant Fighting Fund. They are meeting workers who want to know more about the Socialist Workers Party, read its books and get its paper out to others.
Jacquie Henderson reports that socialists in Cincinnati have been calling people they have met recently about the party and its activities. Henderson called Alexis Ashmore, a member of the American Postal Workers Union, who she and Cincinnati SWP City Council candidate Ned Measel met in March at a protest in Frankfort, Kentucky, against government attacks on postal workers.
Ashmore was enthusiastic about the Militant and wanted to renew her subscription. “I want to share this paper with my co-workers and friends,” she told Henderson. “I have looked over the books featured in the paper and I think they will be helpful too.” She ordered three books — Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women; Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity; and Tribunes of the People and the Trade Unions — and donated $50 to the Militant Fighting Fund. “We’re mailing the books to Alexis, and we plan to arrange a get-together soon to talk more,” Henderson said.
May 1 workers’ demonstrations
At the “A Day Without Immigrants” rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, attended by several thousand people May 1, SWP Minneapolis mayoral candidate Kevin Dwire and supporters set up a table and found interest in the Militant’s coverage of protests against Hamas in Gaza. They sold a copy of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class and The Jewish Question, as well as eight other books and 12 Militant subscriptions.
“While campaigning for Laura Anderson, SWP candidate for Miami mayor, at the May 1 action in front of the Social Security Administration building we ran into several people who expressed appreciation of the SWP and its clear stand against Jew-hatred,” Rachele Fruit reports. “And concern about the threat of war was on the mind of many.”
“I’m just getting involved in politics for the first time,” Jean Carlos Oliver told Anderson. “I think it’s important for us to educate ourselves by reading about what other revolutionaries did in the past.” He subscribed to the Militant and got Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes.
“Many workers are taking a stand against the government’s deportation of unionist Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Tony Lane, SWP candidate for Pittsburgh mayor, told the Militant. Abrego Garcia is a sheet metal worker wrongly deported to El Salvador by Washington.
Last week Lane and others went to a celebration of the birthday of August Wilson, the noted African American playwright who lived in and wrote about the Hill District, Pittsburgh’s historic Black community. Lawanda McCord told Lane she was pleased to see the Militant’s coverage of the fight for Abrego Garcia’s return. Six people at the celebration subscribed to the Militant and five books were sold.
In Palmetto, Georgia, three members of Teamsters Local 728 on strike against 10 Roads Express have subscribed to the Militant and one bought Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs, an account of the 1934 organizing drive and strike that made Minneapolis a union town. The drivers there have been on strike for three months, reports Susan LaMont, SWP candidate for Atlanta mayor.
Many workers who see the Militant for the first time decide to kick in a contribution to the Militant Fighting Fund. The paper is entirely financed by contributions from working people.
Many May Day rallies attracted numbers of unionists and immigrant workers, fighting for amnesty for immigrants in the U.S. and in support of workers on strike in their area, while some were smaller with a larger component of leftist groups.
The April 27 May Day rally in Dallas, unlike the large rally there on Cesar Chavez Day March 31, was dominated by these forces. Alyson Kennedy, SWP candidate for mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, attended along with supporters.
“When a rally marshal told us we were not welcome because of our position defending Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews and our opposition to the efforts of Hamas and its backers in Tehran to carry out another Holocaust, we stood our ground,” reported Kennedy. “We explained we had built support for May Day and the fight to defend immigrant rights and union fights today, including the return of Abrego Garcia.
“One speaker from the platform and other marshals repeated the demand we leave. In response, a number of workers came up to the table to discuss what had happened and say they disagreed with the attempt to shut the party down.
“One of the marshals tried to stop people from talking to us at our table, but after a few minutes saw they weren’t having any success and left. We kept discussing politics and ended up selling a Militant subscription and some books,” Kennedy said.
Socialist Workers Party campaigners report real interest in the paper, its reports on world politics and the road forward for the working class offered by the SWP and its candidates. The campaign runs through May 20. The Seattle branch just raised its quotas and the Oakland branch raised its quotas a second time. Several branches report they expect to go over their Militant Fighting Fund quotas, which will help achieve the $165,000 international goal.
You can find out about how to join the SWP by contacting the branch nearest you listed in the Militant distributors directory.