The three-week campaign of Jonathan Silberman, who is on the ballot as the Communist League candidate in the Holborn and St. Pancras parliamentary by-election in London, has found serious interest since it was launched Sept. 19.
“In two weeks of campaigning,” CL member Catharina Tirsén told the Militant, “22 people have signed up for subscriptions to the Militant and 26 books by Socialist Workers Party and other revolutionary leaders have been sold. One week to go in the election campaign!”
It’s part of a promising start to a seven-week international campaign kicked off Sept. 26 by the SWP and Communist Leagues in the U.K., Canada and Australia. The goal of the campaign is to expand the reach of the Militant and books by revolutionary leaders and to build support for the 2026 election campaigns of the SWP and CLs, with a plan to sell 1,150 Militant subscriptions and the same number of books. The SWP Party-Building Fund is set to raise $140,000.
John Dixon, an office worker, sent an email to Silberman’s campaign, asking to join the party’s efforts. He heard about the CL candidate from the media and from the website “Who can I vote for?” He joined in doorstep campaigning that same day, Tirsén said.
In one exchange with a student originally from China who said he’d like to come to campaign meetings but is not eligible to vote, Dixon told him that wasn’t an issue. He himself lives 20 miles away in Surrey.
“The Communist League is not like the other parties that focus on seeking votes in Holborn and St. Pancras. Rather, the CL is building a working-class movement — and that’s a national and international task,” he said. Dixon told the CL campaigners that his experience was “wonderful” and he subscribed to the Militant.
Council worker Frederick Bielo got a Militant subscription after Silberman knocked on his door Sept. 26. “Other parties have knocked on our door but all they’re interested in is our vote. Then they move on,” Bielo said. “I tell them, ‘you make promises every election but nothing changes.’” Bielo and his wife Grace both said they appreciated the discussion with Silberman and the exchange on world and U.K. politics.
While campaigning door to door in Silver Spring, Maryland, Sept. 18, Samir Hazboun, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Washington, D.C., and campaign supporters were invited in by an Afghan cook who didn’t want his name published.
Over homemade Afghan food they discussed world politics and the situation in the Middle East. He pointed to the picture of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, meeting with Adolf Hitler in The Fight Against Jew-Hatred in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class. “Where I’m from in Afghanistan and everywhere in the Middle East, we all know that Hamas, the Houthis and other similar groups, all they care about is killing Jews,” he said. “But how can we get something different? They dominate everything and will never allow any other parties like yours to exist.”
“We have no crystal ball of when a mass movement that can topple these reactionary anti-working-class parties will develop,” Hazboun told him, “but we know that without a battle-tested leadership and an already developed political program, truly revolutionary working-class parties will not be able to be built. That’s what we’re doing here in the U.S. — building the SWP — and that’s what will have to be done in the Middle East.”
He got a subscription to the Militant and asked campaigners to come back with more books in Farsi on Malcolm X and other revolutionary leaders.
Campaigners for SWP candidates in a number of cities reported that new Militant subscribers also gave contributions to the SWP Party-Building Fund.
To join in campaigning in your area, contact the Militant distributors.