Socialist Workers Party members are organizing to expand the readership of the Militant and books by party leaders and other revolutionaries, and campaigning to win new readers of the paper to renew their subscriptions. They’re especially looking out for those who are interested in joining them in these efforts, in cities, towns and rural areas.
The Militant is unique. No other newspaper campaigns consistently for the interests of workers, farmers and all those exploited or oppressed under capitalism and points a road forward. It is written and distributed by working people.
Wherever we take the Militant we also bring books on revolutionary politics and the party’s action program. Together they place our struggles today within the history of working-class battles over decades, explain why the rule of the capitalist families is at the root of the problems we face and why working people are capable of replacing capitalist rule with our own government.
“We don’t tell the people to believe. We tell them to read!” said Fidel Castro, the central leader of Cuba’s socialist revolution. Castro acted on the fact that defending the conquests of their revolution required working people to deepen their self-confidence and class consciousness as they fought and studied together.
Take advantage of the special offer of 20% off for all Pathfinder books through the end of January, and even larger discounts for subscribers on selected titles. See ad for more details. If your subscription is running out, you can renew online so that you don’t miss a single issue.
Workers, working farmers, independent owner-operator truck drivers and other small proprietors are all feeling today’s intertwined capitalist economic, social and health crisis. Many are discussing what workers can do to defend ourselves.
“I’m a nurse and I work in private home care,” Tina Ruest told Communist League members Michel Prairie and Katy LeRougetel when they knocked on her door in Montreal Dec. 20. Home care workers “don’t even have any sick days,” she said. “They don’t have a union. They don’t have health benefits. They don’t even have protective equipment. This has got to change.”
“Our unions have to fight for this. We have to rely on ourselves,” LeRougetel said. Prairie pointed to past strikes in Quebec that won increases in the minimum wage and better conditions.
Ruest wasn’t convinced, pointing to a strike she was involved in. “Did it change anything?”
Organizing to change what workers face “starts with talking to each other and offering solidarity,” LeRougetel said. “One union can’t go it alone.” Ruest decided to subscribe to the Militant to learn more about what workers can do.
The paper explains why today’s massive unemployment necessitates organizing to fight to get workers back into jobs. It describes how workers learn from our own experiences and see our capacities in struggle.
This worker-correspondent discussed these questions with a taxi driver during weekly campaigning at cab lines by members of the SWP in New York Dec. 22. He agreed when I told him there needs to be one union for all drivers, whether they work for Yellow Cab, Uber or a car service, to stand up to the bosses. He had seen how looting and other violent acts had undermined protests against cop brutality. Those kinds of actions are of no use, he said.
When workers organize ourselves, I said, we make sure that protests are led in a disciplined way to maximize the numbers who join the actions, and their effectiveness. He got a copy of the Militant and we traded phone numbers to talk some more.
The Militant encourages all those who want to change the miserable conditions workers face to read books like Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power and The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, as well as Tribunes of the People and the Trade Unions.
More workers’ struggles
Even in the midst of the capitalist crisis and government-imposed lockdowns, health care workers, teachers, poultry workers and others in the U.S. have gone out on strike to demand higher wages, job safety and better working conditions. Millions of farmers have taken to the streets in India. Working people are protesting in the Kurdish region in Iraq.
The next uptick in employment will create conditions that can give workers more confidence in our ability to join together and stand up to the bosses’ assaults on our living and working conditions.
What we do now can strengthen today’s fights and those to come.
Some Militant readers are taking their own initiatives to promote the paper. A subscriber in South Carolina said he’s been showing his Militants around and a waitress at a restaurant he frequents is especially interested. He’s going to invite her to subscribe.
We frequently get letters from our subscribers behind bars telling us they are showing the paper to others and more inmates have been subscribing.
Do you have friends, co-workers, neighbors or relatives who should be reading the Militant and books? Encourage them to subscribe and get some of these books.
Would you like to join with others to win new readers to the revolutionary press on workers’ doorsteps, at strike picket lines and protests? See distributors nearest you.