OAKLAND, Calif. — Supporters of the Socialist Workers Party are in the final days of the eight-week fall campaign to introduce the party to more working people and extend the readership of the Militant and books by SWP and other revolutionary leaders. Members of the SWP, and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K., plan to go over the international goals of 1,300 Militant subscriptions and the same number of books by Nov. 18. While the 2025 elections are over, the SWP is already running candidates for elections next year as contests are getting underway, including Norton Sandler for governor of California and David Rosenfeld for U.S. Senate from Illinois.
Door-to-door teams in workers’ neighborhoods are key to the party’s weekly work. There is no letup in capitalism’s deepening crisis and the class struggle — or the SWP’s campaigning. The SWP aims to lead in building an independent working-class party capable of taking political power from the capitalists and their Democratic and Republican parties, which rule over worsening conditions for working people worldwide amid the growing threat of war.
“A campaign team from Oakland visited Stockton, an industrial city in California’s Central Valley, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested some two dozen immigrant workers there,” Betsey Stone reports. “Going door to door we found opposition to the arrests and a positive response to the party’s call for amnesty for immigrants working in the U.S.”
“I’m against how ICE is scaring people,” Katherine Claudio told Stone at her door. “I can see arresting someone who’s done something criminal, but they are just grabbing hard-working people.”
“It’s in the interests of all workers to oppose these attacks,” Stone replied. “Equal rights for all, with or without papers, is needed to strengthen our unions. Denying due process to immigrants undercuts rights all workers need.”
Claudio, an unemployed worker, wants a nurse’s aide job but can’t find any. “The Socialist Workers Party calls for unions to fight for a federally funded jobs program to put millions to work building things workers need, like child care centers, housing and hospitals,” Stone said. Claudio subscribed to the Militant to learn more.
A truck driver who has been involved in an organizing drive also subscribed and got the books Teamster Rebellion; The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward; and Revolution and the Road to Peace in Colombia: The Example of the Cuban Revolution.
Josefina Otero reports from Dallas that she and Gerardo Sánchez met Herlinda Gomez, a Fort Worth librarian, while campaigning in a grocery store parking lot. They discussed Israel’s efforts to defeat Hamas to prevent another Holocaust as well as the need to get the heel of Hamas off the people of Gaza.
Worldwide fight against Jew-hatred
Gomez, who grew up in Michoacan, Mexico, also supports the fight of Kilmar Abrego García and the demand for amnesty for all immigrants in the U.S. to unite the working class. She bought a Militant subscription and The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class to be able to show others about Hamas’ roots.
She also got The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us to learn more about resistance by working people today. She took catalogs describing a range of Pathfinder books to order some for the library where she works.
At an election-night event in Minneapolis Nov. 4, Mary Martin reports, the SWP candidate for mayor, Kevin Dwire, and Edwin Fruit for City Council celebrated with supporters the accomplishments of the SWP campaign. Gabriel, a West African immigrant, bought Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women in French. “This is a very important book for people in Africa,” he said. “I will send it to my daughter when I finish reading it.”
In the union bakery where Fruit works, a Somalian-born co-worker bought three copies of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch. He told Fruit one copy was for himself and two for other family members, all of whom oppose Jew-hatred and Hamas’ murderous course in the Middle East.
Seattle SWP members set up a booth at the annual Portland, Oregon, book festival Nov. 8, selling 83 books and 24 subscriptions.
To join the effort, find out more, meet SWP members, or join the party, contact a distributor.