On the heels of the U.S. midterm elections Nov. 3, the international campaign by the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and United Kingdom to win 1,150 new readers to the Militant and sell an equal number of books by SWP and other revolutionary leaders continues to make steady progress as it heads into its final week. Another $19,812 was collected toward the $140,000 SWP Party-Building Fund. The seven-week campaign wraps up Nov. 17.
On workers’ doorsteps, strike picket lines, demonstrations against Jew-hatred, book fairs and at cultural events, working people are responding to SWP campaigners introducing the Militant and discussing what the working class can do to protect our class interests as the bosses and their government continue to push their economic crisis onto our backs.
“I just don’t understand why there is such hatred for the Jews,” Carl Gorsuch, a member of the Laborers’ union, told SWP campaigners Tony Lane and Candace Wagner on his doorstep in Lorain, Ohio, Nov. 8. Lane explained that there is a centurieslong history of Jew-hatred that has been gaining momentum amid the deepening world economic crisis. And it is being ‘normalized’ in bourgeois politics.
“Only when the working class takes power can it be ended,” Lane said. “In the meantime it must be exposed for the danger to the working class it poses and protested against whenever it appears.” Gorsuch wanted to know more and bought a copy of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class along with a Militant subscription.
Tony Hunt and Hugo Wils, members of the Communist League in the U.K., joined supporters of the Militant from France and Belgium in the union protests against the government in France Nov. 5 and 7, and campaigned door to door in between in a working-class area of Deuil-le-Barre, near Paris. Over the three days, dozens of Pathfinder books and six Militant subscriptions were sold.
Stephanie Matenot, who works for an online pharmacy company and is the union steward there, told Wils she wanted to discuss the U.S. blockade against Cuba when he knocked on her door. “They are strangling Cuba,” she said, “and I don’t understand why.”
“They’ve tried for 65 years to overthrow Cuba’s socialist revolution because it showed that with the right leadership, like Fidel Castro, working people can take political power into their own hands,” Wils said. “Capitalist rulers — in Paris as much as Washington — think Cuba is a dangerous example. We’re building working-class parties that seek to emulate that example.”
Matenot got a French-language booklet of Militant articles by SWP leader Steve Clark, including one based on last summer’s SWP conference, “Building a working-class party on Marxist foundations in the fight for workers’ power,” and “Cuban Revolution set an example for fighters.”
Sales brisk at book fairs
SWP members set up a Pathfinder booth at the Twin Cities Book Festival in St. Paul Nov. 7. With attractive displays drawing people in, 17 participants got Militant subscriptions and 58 books by SWP and other revolutionaries were sold. The best seller was Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by Víctor Dreke.
Most workers who commented about the just-concluded election had a “wait and see” attitude about the Democrats who were elected, Fruit said. Sandra Eide, a healthcare worker and member of the Service Employees International Union, said she didn’t think much would change.
She got a Militant subscription, Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs, a central leader of the 1934 strikes that built the industrial union movement in Minneapolis, and Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity, a materialist history.
In Irving, Texas, SWP members from Dallas-Fort Worth were invited to set up a literature table at the Ghana Nurses Association Community Health Fair Oct. 31. The group promotes healthcare and raises funds to organize medical missions and donates medical equipment and supplies for toilers in Ghana.
Participants bought four Militant subscriptions and 11 Pathfinder titles, including six copies of Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.
Rally against Jew-hatred
Over 1,000 rallied against Jew-hatred at Rittenhouse Square Park in Philadelphia Nov. 8, outnumbering bikers who had organized an action there calling for Jewish-owned restaurants to be shut down. SWP campaigners got a good reception, selling three Militant subscriptions and two copies of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch. SWP member Willie Cotton said many people there to defend the restaurants wanted to take pictures of him and his sign: “Socialist Workers Party stands against Jew-Hatred; For Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews; For workers power and socialism.”
Both Cotton and Osborne Hart, another party member, were interviewed by the press several times. To pitch in to help take the drive over the top, contact distributors nearest you or call the Militant.