http://themilitant.com/2016/8020/802004.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 20 May 23, 2016
(front page)
Socialist Workers Party builds June Active
Workers Conference
Militant/Lisa Potash
SWP vice-presidential candidate Osborne Hart, right, at Verizon
solidarity rally in Atlanta. Party is campaigning across country,
fighting for ballot status, winning new Militant readers.
BY MAGGIE TROWE
The three-day Socialist Workers Party-sponsored Active Workers
Conference begins June 16 in Oberlin, Ohio, less than five weeks from
now. Several hundred people from across the U.S. and around the world
will hear reports on working-class struggles, the crisis of the
dictatorship of capital, the continuing example of Cuba’s socialist
revolution and prospects for building an internationalist, revolutionary
proletarian party. They will attend classes, panel discussions, social
events and a final summary meeting, as well as have time to meet other
participants and share experiences.
“I’ve been taking part in activities with the Socialist Workers Party —
campaigning door to door in New Jersey, joining in the protest of 34
Women for Oscar López, the Puerto Rican independence fighter, and
marching across the Brooklyn Bridge with Verizon strikers,” Yasemin
Aydinoglu, a nurse from Brooklyn, New York, said May 9. “I’ve gotten
curious about how it fits together, and going to the conference will
give me a broader perspective.”
“Reading newspapers is different for me now,” she said. “I used to
assume articles in papers like the New York Times gave an accurate
picture. But after I went to a rally of workers for $15 an hour and a
union at Foley Square, I read the Times article the next day that
reported that Governor Cuomo promised a $15 minimum wage, never
mentioning the workers’ protests.”
The conference will culminate the SWP’s spring party-building
activities. As we enter the last week of the six-week drive to win
subscribers and financial supporters for the Militant, 1,233
subscriptions have come in toward the 1,550 international quota and
$66,646 toward the $110,000 goal for the Militant Fighting Fund.
In Atlanta Keith Beaver said he wanted to help win more readers to the
Militant. He mailed in three subscriptions from relatives and friends.
Then he invited party members to go door to door with him in his
neighborhood in Decatur May 10. In two hours they sold six subscriptions
and a copy of Is Socialist Revolution in the U.S. Possible? And got a $5
contribution to the Militant Fighting Fund.
“We talked with members of the International Longshoremen’s Association
outside their union halls in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale last week,” SWP
Miami organizer Anthony Dutrow told the Militant. “Two dockworkers who
are longtime readers renewed their subscriptions, and two others decided
to try the introductory offer. We have seven subscriptions to go to make
our quota.”
Party supporters in some areas are organizing to surpass their Militant
fund quotas to help make the international drive a success. “We’ll go
over our $3,500 goal,” SWP Twin Cities organizer David Rosenfeld reports.
Socialist Workers Party members and supporters are campaigning for
Alyson Kennedy and Osborne Hart, the SWP candidates for U.S. president
and vice president, as well as statewide candidates. Efforts to put the
presidential ticket on the ballot have succeeded in Colorado and are
underway in Louisiana, New Jersey, Tennessee, Washington state and
Minnesota.
SWP supporters have been campaigning door to door in more than two dozen
cities and towns across New Jersey — from Wanaque in the northwest to
Lyndhurst, Nutley and Newark to Paulsboro in the south, joining Verizon
strikers’ picket lines wherever they see them. Nearly 1,200 people have
signed to put the party on the ballot and the party plans to wrap up the
drive, hold a statewide press conference and file the nominating
petitions at the state capitol in Trenton later this month.
Hart visits farmers in Georgia
SWP vice-presidential candidate Osborne Hart, accompanied by Sam Manuel,
SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in Georgia, and Susan LaMont from Atlanta,
traveled to southern Georgia and the Florida panhandle May 5-7 to talk
with farmers and workers, learn more about their struggles and discuss
coming to the party conference.
Willie Head, a farmer in Pavo, Georgia, who had toured Cuba farms with
Manuel in 2015, showed them around his farm.
“I saw again how Cuba farmers, with the help of the Revolution, are able
to keep their farm equipment going and overcome all kinds of obstacles
so they can help feed the Cuban people,” Head said. “People around here
are starved for political awareness. I don’t see how we can continue to
exist if we aren’t political.”
Head showed them his new irrigation system, which he installed himself
after waging a fight to get a grant from the government.
Hart told Head he agreed that following the revolutionary road Cuban
toilers have taken is the only way workers and working farmers can survive.
To join the Socialist Workers Party in campaigning for socialism or find
out more about the conference, contact the nearest party branch.
Related articles:
Spring subscription drive, April 2 - May 17 (week 5)
Militant Fighting Fund, April 2- May 17 (week 5)
Join the Socialist Workers Party campaign in 2016!
Help get the SWP presidential ticket on the ballot
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