Since the Jew-hating massacre at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 14, members of the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K. have stepped up their campaigning, explaining the stakes for the labor movement and all working people in combating Jew-hatred and pogroms wherever they take place.
At the center of the party’s campaigning is going door to door in working-class neighborhoods. Party members also join strike picket lines and union rallies, demonstrations against attacks on immigrants and protests against Washington’s blockade of Venezuela and Cuba.
They explain that as the capitalist crisis deepens and the rulers accelerate their march toward a third world war, the need for workers to break with the capitalist parties and fight to take political power into their own hands is sharply posed.
In Arlington, Texas, SWP members Hilda Cuzco and Gerardo Sánchez campaigned in a Walmart parking lot Dec. 20. Lisa Reddix got a copy of the Militant when she saw the article condemning the pogrom in Australia. “I’m interested in what’s going on and I feel there must be a change for the hard-working people,” she told Cuzco.
“What’s in the newspaper got my interest,” Bernita Dowell told Cuzco and Sánchez when they showed her the Militant. She said she was interested “in the book on the history of the Jewish people,” pointing to The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
She said she was concerned about rising Jew-hatred “because I’m Black, and I can relate to injustice due to color or religion.” She decided not to get the book now, but handed Sánchez $20, saying, “I want to donate to help somebody who is interested in a book or wants to subscribe to the paper.”
In Fort Worth the next day, SWP member Alyson Kennedy met a construction worker as she campaigned door to door. He knew about the massacre of Jews in Australia and the stepped-up threats by Washington against Venezuela. He bought a Militant subscription.
In Hialeah west of Miami, SWP members met a retired couple from Honduras when they campaigned at a parking lot. They listened with interest as party members explained what can be done to fight Jew-hatred. They drove off, but came back 10 minutes later and donated $5.
“The U.S. imperialists are crazy,” a worker, originally from Cuba, told SWP member Laura Anderson, pointing to their stepped-up war moves against Venezuela. He donated $5 and bought a Militant containing the introduction to Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters.
The book, available Jan. 1, is a firsthand account by Cuban revolutionary leader Víctor Dreke of one of the most important anti-imperialist struggles that swept the globe after World War II. It brings to life Cuba’s internationalist aid to the revolutionary struggle led by Amílcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissau.
In Minneapolis Dec. 20 many of the participants at a march in defense of immigrant rights warmed up inside the Karmel Mall, including SWP members Mary Martin and Joanne Murphy. They found an interest in the Militant and books by party leaders.
“I am here to stand up for my neighbors who are being targeted by ICE,” Carolyn Belle, who is Jewish, told Martin and Murphy. She got a copy of the Militant, telling the SWP members she was glad to see the paper’s coverage of protests against the slaughter in Australia, as well as an article on a protest called by the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 9 demanding a halt to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents using post office property to organize arrests of immigrants in Minneapolis.
At a coffee shop in the mall, Abdi, who had participated in the march, looked through the Militant and told Martin that something had to be done to stop the killing of Jews.
Originally from Somalia, he agreed with Martin and Murphy when they explained the defeat of Hamas was necessary for Jews, Arabs and other working people in the region to advance their common class interests. The discussion was cut short when his boss showed up. Abdi asked the SWP campaigners to come back another day with The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch for him to purchase.