http://themilitant.com/2015/7942/794203.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 42 November 23, 2015
(front page)
Thank you for help in Socialist
Workers Party sales, fund drive
The letter below is from Naomi Craine and John Studer, the directors of
the Socialist Workers Party’s Militant subscription drive and
Party-Building Fund drive.
On behalf of the Socialist Workers Party, we thank all of you who
participated in the party’s fall drives, which succeeded in getting the
SWP more broadly known in the working class, expanding the reach of the
party’s press and books and raising the funds needed to continue our work.
More than 2,200 people subscribed to the Militant over the two-month
campaign, meeting the total of quotas adopted by SWP branches across the
U.S. and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the
United Kingdom.
The 2015 Party-Building Fund went over the top, thanks to many new
contributors, as well as longtime supporters of the party’s work. Every
branch exceeded its quota, raising a total of $101,098.
Welcome to the many new readers of the Militant. We hope you will enjoy
the paper, use it to strengthen labor and social struggles you are
involved in and share it with co-workers, friends, political
collaborators and neighbors.
We encourage you to take advantage of the special offers on books from
Pathfinder Press to learn more about the party’s program and
revolutionary working-class politics (see ad below).
The Philadelphia Socialist Workers Party set an example for the coming
2016 presidential election and party campaigns across the country,
running Osborne Hart for mayor and John Staggs for City Council
at-large. They and campaign supporters presented a revolutionary
working-class program, including in public debates with the Democrats,
Republicans and other capitalist candidates. They took the Militant,
which championed the campaign, to working-class neighborhoods, labor
picket lines and social protest actions across the city and beyond,
surpassing their goals.
Another highlight of the drive was our experiences introducing the party
and its program to working people in small towns and rural areas in
different regions.
The Atlanta SWP organized teams to Seneca, South Carolina, where the
family of Zachary Hammond has been fighting to get the cop who killed
the 19 year old indicted. They also knocked on doors and won subscribers
in Red Bank, South Carolina, where white supremacist Dylann Storm Roof
lived before he carried out the political assassination of nine
African-Americans in Charleston in June.
The receptivity they found to the party and its press gives the lie to
the claim by many liberals that workers who are Caucasian are “white
trash,” becoming more reactionary, especially in the rural South.
SWP members in Chicago and other cities effectively combined building
solidarity with autoworkers and steelworkers resisting the bosses’
concession demands and discussing the party’s program with workers in
towns across the Midwest.
Party members and collaborators, including new Militant readers, became
more deeply involved across the country in workers’ struggles and
winning support for the Nov. 10 strikes and protests.
The campaigning doesn’t stop with the end of the drive. Party members in
Oakland, California, reported that during the Nov. 10 actions nine
workers subscribed to the paper, 70 others got single copies and three
people got Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power.
The success in going over the $100,000 fund goal enables the party to
continue its international work with others in defense of the Cuban
Revolution and to respond to new developments in the class struggle in
the United States and beyond.
As we head into 2016, we invite all those who have begun to learn about
the party over the course of the fall campaigns to join us in getting
the SWP and its program more widely known — and building actions from
the fights to raise the minimum wage and build unions, to protesting
imperialism and its wars and telling the truth about the example of
Cuba’s socialist revolution. And, while doing so, join us in ongoing
efforts to expand the circulation of the Militant to fellow fighters.
Contact one of the party units listed on page 8.
Naomi Craine
SWP subscription drive director
John Studer
SWP Party-Building Fund director
Related articles:
Socialist Workers Party drive for new readers! (chart)
Party-Building Fund (chart)
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