FORT WORTH, Texas — With the 2024 election over and President-elect Donald Trump preparing his administration, members of the Socialist Workers Party are finding ongoing interest among working people in the party’s program and activity. Workers want to discuss what can be done in the face of a harshly declining living standard under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Whoever they voted for on Nov. 5, workers are determined to defend their class interests, as today’s union struggles show. At the same time, tens of millions worldwide are getting drawn into politics under the impact of attacks on Jews — like the recent “Jew-hunt” in Amsterdam — Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the threat of more wars.
In these conditions, interest grows in the SWP’s call for a class break with the capitalist rulers and their twin parties. Through the pages of the Militant and books by SWP leaders, the party explains that the working class is an international class with common interests against the capitalists and their governments, and must chart an independent road forward.
SWP branches, along with the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K. are mapping out plans for the final days of the international campaign to sell 1,300 subscriptions to the Militant and the same number of books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries. SWP members are raising $140,000 for the annual party-building fund.
Central to bringing home the campaigns in full and on time, is continuing to introduce the party and its literature to workers on their doorsteps. SWP members Lisa Rottach and Dan Fein met construction worker Rogelio Avalos outside his house in East Chicago, Indiana, Nov. 9. Avalos told them he didn’t vote for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, because “neither one offered anything to workers.”
Rachele Fruit, the SWPs candidate for president, explained that to advance working-class interests we need to build a party of our own, and chart a course to take political power into our own hands, Fein told Avalos. Fruit also called for an amnesty for undocumented workers in the U.S. in order to unify working people and strengthen the labor movement, he said.
“Yes, we need unity,” Avalos replied. “The government wants immigrant workers to do the jobs I used to do when I first came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1999.” Avalos got a subscription to the Militant and the book, The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
As strike battles and other union struggles continue, more workers can see what’s possible when we rely on ourselves and fellow workers to stand up to the bosses’ attacks. The Militant’s weekly coverage of these struggles is one reason why the paper is winning new and long-term readers. A retired member of the United Steelworkers union at the Exxon oil refinery in Beaumont, Texas, just mailed in a one-year subscription renewal.
As SWP branches close in on their quotas, they’re taking advantage of the special offers on several titles, including The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward; The Fight Against Jew-Hatred in the Imperialist Epoch; Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power and other titles.
Complaints are mounting among Democrats blaming their election defeat on workers of all nationalities and both sexes. Another of the titles on special offer is Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning Under Capitalism by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes. It explains why the capitalist rulers and their backers in the upper-middle-class meritocracy, like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, treat working people with utter disdain.
The preface and first chapters of the new edition of Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women was printed in English in the last two issues of the Militant, and now in Spanish. These issues are being used by party members to secure specially priced prepublication orders for the book, which will be available in December.
To get involved in the campaign or to contribute to the SWP Party-Building Fund contact the branch nearest you.