CHICAGO — In the final week before the vote for the U.S. presidency, Socialist Workers Party members continued to find interest in and support for the party’s working-class program and course.
They’re taking steps toward successfully completing the eight-week campaign to sell 1,300 Militant subscriptions, the same number of books by party leaders and other revolutionaries and raise $140,000 for the SWP Party-Building Fund, as they join picket lines and campaign door to door in working-class neighborhoods.
SWP congressional candidate Naomi Craine and party member Lisa Rottach participated in a rally to support a union-organizing drive at Lineage, a cold storage warehouse here. The drive by Teamsters Local 703 began in February. Eighty-four workers will vote Nov. 7 on whether to unionize.
Juan Manuel Garcia Nungaray and four co-workers from nearby produce supplier Marano attended to show their support. They’re members of the same local.
“We already have a union, but everybody needs one,” Garcia said.
“Solidarity strengthens our hand against the bosses,” Rottach said. “We need a party of our own, to put us in the strongest position to wage a fight to take power into our own hands. A party of labor would advance this fight on a global scale.”
“If we could get a labor party that would be amazing. I’m up for it,” Garcia said. He subscribed to the Militant and bought Teamster Rebellion and The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by SWP leaders Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark. Two other unionists bought Militant subscriptions. One also got Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Barnes and gave a $5 donation to the SWP campaign.
Ten new subscribers
“There are now 10 Militant subscribers in Spalding in rural Lincolnshire, where the strike by Unite union members at Bakkavor has entered its sixth week,” reports Communist League member Pamela Holmes from the U.K. “Six subscribers are strikers. The others have signed up when members of the CL have knocked on their doors.”
The CL has put winning solidarity with the strike at the center of its activity. “Many people we’ve spoke with on their doorsteps, work in the big food factories in or near the town,” Holmes added. Workers at the Bakkavor plant in London bought 13 copies of the Militant with articles about the strike when she and another party member set up a table at the plant gate.
“Three of the new subscribers in Spalding have contributed to the League’s 6,000 pound ($7,775) party fund, as well as picking up copies of The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us; Teamster Rebellion; and The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
“The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms has been far and away the top-seller,” Holmes, the organizer of the CL’s London branch, said. “Over 60 copies of the book have been bought — on picket lines, on doorsteps, in protests against antisemitism, at a Battle of Ideas Festival and at the Black British Book Fair.”
Etty Harel in Memphis, Tennessee, picked up a copy of the Militant Oct. 30 and then texted SWP campaigner Ned Measel to tell him the paper “was such a change from the usual media.”
The next day she met Measel and SWP member Amy Husk. Harel, who is 72, came here from Israel 10 years ago. She told the SWP members her parents moved from Salonika, Greece, during World War II to Egypt and then to Israel in 1955. Following the Nazi occupation of Greece, the Jewish community there was decimated, with some 45,000 dying in concentration camps and only a small number fleeing to other countries.
Harel subscribed to the Militant and got the books Cuba and the Coming American Revolution and In Defense of the U.S. Working Class. She planned to vote for the SWP presidential ticket.
Rebecca Williamson reports that supporters of SWP presidential candidate Rachele Fruit got a good response at the annual Portland, Oregon, Book Festival.
Rachel Dyal, who works with people with eating disorders, described never-ending battles with insurance companies and medical institutions to get adequate health care for her patients. Dyal purchased a subscription to the Militant and the books Woman’s Evolution; Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women; and Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity.
To join campaigning with SWP or Communist League members contact the party branch nearest you.