http://themilitant.com/2015/7937/793703.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 37 October 19, 2015
(front page)
Join Socialist Workers Party subscription, fund drives!
BY NAOMI CRAINE
Halfway through the Socialist Workers Party subscription drive, we’ve
fallen a little behind in the effort to sign up 2,300 new and renewing
readers to the Militant. But the response to the paper — from
steelworkers locked out by ATI and fighting concessions at ArcelorMittal
who’ve written about their fights, to enthusiasm about the paper’s
working-class perspective on world and labor politics from those who’ve
gotten subscriptions and books on their doorstep — shows that by
organizing a thought-out and sustained campaign we can reach and surpass
our goal.
A team from Washington, D.C., went to Steelton, Pennsylvania, just
outside Harrisburg, where there’s an old Bethlehem Steel mill now owned
by ArcelorMittal. “We went door to door on three different streets and
sold five subscriptions,” reports Ned Measel. “We didn’t run into any
steelworkers, but sold a paper to the wife and daughter of a worker from
the mill.”
“One of the new subscribers is a retired paperworker who is Puerto
Rican,” Measel said. “He also took some flyers to show his pastor for
the Nov. 7 meeting with Kenia Serrano in Washington.” (See details on
the upcoming visit to the U.S. by Serrano, president of the Cuban
Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, on page 7.)
On Oct. 10 SWP members and others from around the East Coast will take
part in the “Justice or Else” march in Washington. Called by the Nation
of Islam on the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March, the event has
been broadly built among those involved in struggles against police
brutality, frame-ups and incarceration. It will be a good opportunity to
meet young fighters who will be interested in the revolutionary program
of the party, presented in the Militant and books from Pathfinder.
Several of these books are on special for those who subscribe. Nicholas
Romak, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
in Morris, Illinois, took advantage of this to get Teamster Politics
along with a subscription. The book is the third in a four-book series
by Farrell Dobbs, a central leader of the labor battles that forged the
Teamsters as a fighting union in Minneapolis and the Upper Midwest in
the 1930s. It describes the fight to carry out an independent
working-class political course, including the need for workers to break
politically from the bosses and organize our own labor party — a timely
question for today.
Alyson Kennedy talked to Romak on his doorstep. She said he identified
with the campaign against the Canadian government’s frame-up of railroad
workers for the Lac-Mégantic oil train disaster.
“The companies blame labor when they are the ones who do everything to
increase their profits,” Romak said. “I was working as a contractor at
ExxonMobil when the company told us we have to take a pay cut or they
would get rid of us. I brought the issue to the union but nothing was
done.” He quit, and was out of work for more than a month.
“Morris is a rural town west of Chicago, where there are a lot of
gigantic warehouses owned by Walmart, Costco and others,” Kennedy said.
“We plan to go back to that area next weekend.”
We’ve had to raise the goal for subscriptions from prisoners; in just
four weeks we’ve gotten two new readers and 12 renewals from workers
behind bars. The newspaper often gets passed around once it gets within
prison walls. Many of those renewing include a note. “Militant newspaper
is very informative to population here at this institution,” says one
reader from Pennsylvania. “Please keep up the great reporting.”
“I would like an article on Florida not having parole for its prisoners,
when a majority of other states offer parole,” says a subscriber
incarcerated there.
To join in the subscription effort, contact the party organization
nearest you (see list on page 8).
Related articles:
Socialist Workers Party drive for new readers
SWP fund enables party to reach youth, fighting workers
Party-Building Fund
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