BY BRIAN TAYLOR AND HOWARD ELKHART
Supporters of the Socialist Workers Party-Building Fund
scored a big victory, zooming well beyond the initial $75,000
goal by the June 15 deadline. In the following days checks
earmarked to the fund kept pouring in - more than $93,000 has
been deposited. The final fund chart will appear in the next
Militant issue.
Now let's take the momentum from the final weeks of this campaign and roll it right into efforts to win new readers and subscribers to the Militant newspaper and its Spanish-language sister publication, Perspectiva Mundial, as well as selling Pathfinder's Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium. It gives a boosts to the socialist summer schools that Young Socialists chapters and Socialists Workers Party branches in many cities have launched together. Call your nearest city listed on page 16 for more information.
All of these efforts to build the communist movement will come together in the August 5-7 Active Workers Conference in Ohio (see ad on page 6). Many of you who have contributed to this campaign will want to make plans to join the car caravans from all over the country headed to the conference.
Supporters in a number of cities made final pushes to blow the top off the goal. Below is one page from that story. BY HOWARD ELKHART
SAN FRANCISCO - "The celebration of the 40th anniversary of the agrarian reform [in Cuba] is not about the past. It is about advancing the socialist revolution in Cuba and the world today," said Mary-Alice Waters.
Waters is editor of the Marxist magazine New International and a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. Francisco Picado, a leader of the SWP and Young Socialists leader, Cecilia Ortega, spoke here with Waters June 12 at a banquet and meeting to raise money for the Party- Building Fund.
Waters was recently in Cuba as part of a Militant reporting team that joined celebrations and meetings marking the 40th anniversary of Cuba's first agrarian reform. The first Agrarian Reform Law adopted by the revolutionary government of Cuba was signed on May 17, 1959, signaling the end of the wealthy landowner class' rule in that country.
"The lesson of the Cuban revolution is that you have to have an organization dedicated to changing the world," Waters said.
Waters also talked about the failure of U.S. imperialism to reimpose capitalist social relations on working people in Yugoslavia. "The workers in the workers states cannot be starved into submission, but will have to be crushed, beaten in combat, to accept capitalism."
Working people today, especially those involved in struggles, have wider ears for a communist perspective on the world, noted Francisco Picado. He described some of the fights by workers and farmers today that reflect a change in the thinking and confidence of millions of working people, who increasingly are seeking ways to resist the bosses and their government and connect with other fighters.
These developments pose an exciting challenge for communist workers to join with those fighting today, wherever struggles may break out. This requires that the party organize on a regional basis and extend its reach by getting jobs in meatpacking, garment plants, and coal mines.
Ortega outlined the Young Socialists' plans for an ambitious summer program of study and political activity. Many young socialists are now moving to Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities to join SWP members in classes on Capitalism's World Disorder and other Marxist literature; participate in political actions from campaigning against the U.S. war in Yugoslavia to strike pickets and upcoming demonstrations demanding the release of José Solís and other Puerto Rican political prisoners; and to do political work in industrial plants along with other party members and Young Socialists. The summer program will culminate at an Active Workers Conference, set for August 5-7 in Oberlin, Ohio.
The 55 participants at the meeting raised $3,600 in contributions and pledges to the Party-Building Fund there.
The next evening, Waters spoke at a similar event in Los Angeles that put supporters there more than $3,000 over their $6,000 goal.