CHICAGO — Supporters of the Socialist Workers Party set up a large, well-stocked campaign table at the annual Printers Row Lit Fest in downtown Chicago Sept. 12-13. The table was crowded by people interested in reading about working-class struggles the world over and on key political questions workers confront today. Hundreds browsed the Pathfinder Press titles written by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries to engage in political discussion and debate.
Books by Fidel Castro and other leaders of the Cuban Revolution were the best sellers, with 32 snapped up. The new title 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 was the highest seller, with 10 purchased, as well as 10 copies of We Are Heirs of the World’s Revolutions: Speeches from the Burkina Faso revolution, 1983-87 by Thomas Sankara, who led that revolution in West Africa.
In all, 23 copies of books by Sankara were sold, 36 books on the fight for women’s emancipation, 27 books on Malcolm X and the fight for Black liberation, and six copies of the Marxist magazine New International.
Dominic Mailo was among 43 people who signed up for a subscription to the Militant. “The United States needs to end the embargo on Cuba, it should have ended a long time ago,” he told volunteer Betsy Farley after looking at the paper.
SWP member Farley explained that sharpening competition between imperialist rulers over which one can grab the most wealth created by the working class is the cause of today’s trade conflicts, rearmament and wars. “Only the working class can stop their drive toward a third world war by taking power and abolishing the capitalist system,” she said. Mailo agreed.
Volunteers from Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, as well as the Chicago area, helped staff the table. A total of 169 books were sold. A donation can at the table for fundraising by Global Health Partners for a maternity hospital in Cuba netted $60 in donations.