Members of the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Leagues in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom brought home May 12 the eight-week spring campaign to win 1,300 Militant subscriptions and sell the same number of books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries. During the successful effort they also raised $170,498 for the Militant Fighting Fund.
A total of 1,319 subscriptions to the Militant were sold, along with 1,917 books, exceeding the goals set by party branches.
Thousands of working people spoke with party candidates on the issues facing our class, from building support for union battles and calling for amnesty for immigrants, to fighting Jew-hatred, opposing Washington’s wars and its blockade of Cuba. At the center of the discussion is forging the kind of leadership the working class needs to make a socialist revolution.
“Workers need our own party to fight in our interests. We are going to have to organize a movement of millions to take power away from them,” Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate, told Eunice Adams while she campaigned outside the bustling International Longshoremen’s Association hiring hall in Miami May 9. Adams, 64, has worked on the docks for 35 years.
“You have my vote,” Adams replied.
A friend with her asked about the recent Supreme Court decision and redrawing of the congressional voting districts in Florida.
“The Republicans are trying to manipulate things in their favor. Democrats do the same thing.” Fruit said. “This is an example of their two-party charade. The SWP explains workers must organize ourselves independently of them both and make a socialist revolution to put our class in power, as they did in Cuba. That was a ‘real revolution,’ as Malcolm X put it.”
Adams subscribed to the Militant and purchased a copy of the pamphlet Malcolm X Talks to Young People. She wished Fruit well in her campaign.
Another longshoreman approached the campaign table with a dollar in hand to get the latest copy of the Militant. He told SWP member Lisa Rottach that he didn’t know much about the struggle in the Portuguese colonies in Africa when she showed him the new book, Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by Cuban combatant Víctor Dreke. He was interested and bought a copy. Seven others bought copies of the Militant.
Over the eight-week campaign Kiera Fernandez, who works at a daycare center in Washington, D.C., began regularly taking part in campaigning with the SWP. “The campaign teams are a good way to participate,” she told the Militant. The paper supports working people’s struggles and “only through this can we learn and continue to learn,” she added.
Fernandez says she looks to the Militant for coverage on the Cuban Revolution. “When other groups’ coverage about Cuba died down, the SWP sent a reporting team to Havana,” she said. “That coverage reminds us of the revolution’s strength and resilience — why we defend it.”
Fernandez said she liked the Militant’s 25, 50, and 75 Years Ago column. “I like being educated about the party’s continuity and that column makes it available.” She is currently studying The Fight Against Jew Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class to learn more about the SWP’s continuity on this crucial question.
Margaret Trowe, the SWP candidate for governor of California, and SWP member Joel Britton campaigned May 7 at the afternoon shift change at the Ghirardelli chocolate factory in San Leandro where Trowe used to work. Many members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 125 stopped their cars to talk with her and take a flyer.
“I heard you’re running for governor,” warehouse worker Gabby Lemus told Trowe. “I’ll vote for you!”
Trowe and Britton told workers about the oil workers who are on strike against Marathon, and found some who knew about it and were building solidarity. One worker who comes from a family of Portuguese immigrants bought Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. About a dozen workers picked up a copy of the Militant or said they would renew their subscriptions.
Trowe was interviewed on Laney College KGPC radio’s “The Bottom Half” program by Brando Williams April 30. Williams asked Trowe about the campaign of Don J. Grundmann, who is running on a virulent antisemitic program. In the state’s “Voter Guide” he repeats Jew-hating conspiracies that Israel engineered the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
“I am the only candidate for governor who mentions the fight against Jew-hatred and defends Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews,” Trowe said. “Jew-hatred is a rising problem under capitalism and it is being normalized in the Democratic and Republican parties.” At the same time, she told the program listeners she opposes “calls to censor people for expressing antisemitic ideas because that will ultimately be used against the working class.”
We’re happy to report the Seattle branch of the Socialist Workers Party was informed May 8 that Jacob Perasso is certified on the ballot for U.S. Congress in the 9th District.
To join in getting out the Militant, contact the distributor nearest you.
