OAKLAND, Calif. — The Socialist Workers Party successfully completed the party’s eight-week fall campaign to win 1,300 new Militant subscribers and sell the same number of books by SWP leaders and other revolutionary fighters Nov. 18. Members of the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K. joined in the effort. The SWP also raised $140,000 for its annual Party-Building Fund.
As we go to press, the totals are 1,308 subscriptions, 1,965 books and $144,868 contributed to the fund. A chart showing figures from each area is below.
In Pittsburgh, SWP members campaigned in communities in the surrounding coal-mining region Nov. 16. “We’re here to discuss the worsening economic conditions working people face and the growing threats of World War III,” party member Tony Lane told Mandalynn Baird, a nursing assistant, on her doorstep in Moundsville, West Virginia.
“There’s only one force that can prevent war and build a new society based on human solidarity — the working class,” he said. “As we become more united, we will be powerful enough to take state power into our own hands.”
“That sounds right,” Baird said, “but how do we get there?” Lane explained the importance of bringing solidarity to every struggle in the interests of working people today, how this helps build workers’ confidence in ourselves as a class and why we need to build a political party of our own.
Baird described the challenges she faces at work. “I oversee 60 patients by myself, most of whom suffer from Alzheimer’s. I have to turn patients over. Fortunately I have upper body strength from growing up in the country and chopping wood.” She works six straight 12-hour days with eight days off in between. “It’s rough for my three kids.”
She subscribed to the Militant.
Combating Jew-hatred
Everywhere they’ve campaigned, SWP and CL members explain that the fight against Jew-hatred is at the center of Israel’s war to destroy Hamas, the only road to preventing more pogroms against Jews and defending the existence of Israel in the face of Hamas’ threats to wipe it out.
The U.S. rulers are ratcheting up pressure on Israel to hold off carrying the war through to the end, seeking instead to advance their own interests in the Middle East.
In Fort Worth, Texas, SWP members have sold 14 copies of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class. “Most of them to workers we meet going door to door in working-class neighborhoods,” Alyson Kennedy reports.
“During World War II my father saw prisoners from the death camps in Europe and couldn’t believe what he was seeing,” Militant subscriber Johnnie Lewis told SWP member George Chalmers. Lewis’ wife had visited the Holocaust museum in Dallas, where the “pile of shoes” left by concentration camp victims had a big impact on her, he said. Lewis got a copy of the book to learn more about where Jew-hatred comes from and what can be done to end it.
‘We blew through the fund goal’
Many party branches went over their quotas for the SWP Party-Building Fund.
“The Pittsburgh branch originally took a quota of $6,000 for the fund,” Candace Wagner reports. “Many who regularly contribute pledged larger amounts this year, reflecting their determination to see the party reach more workers. We blew right past our goal and raised it to $7,000. We’re now well over that.
“The highlight has been winning new contributors. A Militant subscriber we visited in Steubenville, Ohio, threw in an extra $47 when she bought two books. One worker who renewed his subscription gave $20 to the fund. After SWP members talked with another worker, he followed them down the street to give them a $20 bill.”
In Washington, D.C., Arlene Rubinstein reports SWP campaigners won 10 new contributors to the fund, including a $40 donation. Five of these were collected by Glova Scott from co-workers at the BCTGM-organized bakery where she works.
Many unionists appreciate the Militant’s “On the Picket Line” column, a valuable tool for publicizing their struggles, learning about other strikes and organizing drives and building solidarity.
Here in the Bay Area some 40 workers at the Safeway bread plant in Richmond, members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 125, recently won a contract after organizing protests outside the plant.
SWP members Joel Britton and Eric Simpson, a member of Local 125 at another factory, talked to workers outside the plant at shift change Nov. 15. “These workers were glad to see the ‘On the Picket Line’ item on how they won a substantial wage increase,” Britton said.
Four workers signed up for introductory subscriptions and three books were sold — two of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward and one of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform Under Capitalism.
In Minneapolis, Edwin Fruit reports “there’s a real hunger for books in English, French, Spanish, Arabic and other languages.
“Last week at the Militant Labor Forum, on ‘Lessons from the 1930s on the fight against fascism and war for today,’ we sold six books, three in French to a worker from Togo.
“At work I sold four books in Arabic to a Somali co-worker. And two books in Spanish to a Nicaraguan-born co-worker, including issue no. 9 of the New International on ‘The Rise and Fall of the Nicaraguan Revolution.’”
The international fall campaign is over but SWP and CL members continue to extend the reach of their parties, week-in and week-out, as the capitalists’ war moves and their attacks on workers living and working conditions deepen.
The party is announcing more candidates for office in 2026. You can join in campaigning activities by contacting the area nearest you.
