BY MARY MARTIN
WASHINGTON, D.C. - A team of Militant supporters spent two
days in the Petersburg, Virginia, area talking to farmers who
are fighting to stay on the land, steelworkers who had struck
the Newport News shipyard and their supporters, and visiting
bookstores suggested by these workers to place copies of
Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the
Millennium.
At a U.S. government settlement application meeting for farmers, six copies of the Militant and one copy of the International Socialist Review supplement to the Militant were sold.
Earlier this year a ruling was handed down on a class- action suit against the U.S. Deptartment of Agriculture brought by thousands of farmers who are Black, charging discrimination in loan policies. The U.S. government was forced to admit to this discrimination, which drove thousands of farmers off the land and others to the brink of bankruptcy. Hoping to quell the farmers' momentum, the government agreed to pay settlements to those who could document discrimination to a judge's satisfaction.
In a final round of settlement application sessions held in Virginia, a few dozen farmers and their supporters came not only from Virginia but from Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina to seek compensation.
In addition to discussing the crisis conditions facing farmers - from drought to falling prices for farm products - many had on their minds the developments effecting workers in industries back home. One farmer from North Carolina said a sports clothing factory in a town near her farm recently closed down, throwing dozens out of work, and moved to Mexico for cheaper labor. She got a copy of the ISR featuring "A sea change in working class politics," which is the opening chapter of Capitalism's World Disorder, to read more about workers' resistance to the crisis of capitalism.
Another farm family member from North Carolina, said he had worked in the past at the Pillowtex (formerly Fieldcrest Cannon) textile plant in Kannapolis, North Carolina. He was pleased to learn of the recent successful union organizing drive there. "That's a positive development for the workers. We really had to stick together in there," he said. He also told the team that the tire factory near his family farm was going on 12-hour shifts and he hoped the union would take this up. "It's hard enough work for eight hours, no one should be forced to work like that for 12 hours."
One farm family member from Virginia turned out to be an airline worker and a member of the same union local as one of the team members. They made plans to get together at the airport for political discussion and to check out Capitalism's World Disorder.
After the farmers settlement application session, the team met with a member of United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Local 8888 who was recently on strike at the shipyard in Newport News. He bought a copy of Capitalism's World Disorder, as he had been planning on doing after getting back to work. He also suggested some bookstores in the area to visit for placing the book and other Pathfinder titles. Over lunch, the team met with another steelworker from a different USWA local based in a chemical plant in Hopewell, Virginia. He was among dozens from his union who went to the Newport News strike periodically to walk the picket line and bring solidarity. He was on his way to work. After looking over the Militant, he decided to subscribe, saying "I never thought I would find a paper like this." He also took a Pathfinder catalog and invited us to come to his plant gate in the near future and meet other workers and show the literature we had.
Following up on the lead given to us from both steelworkers, the team visited a bookstore in a shopping mall in Colonial Heights, Virginia. After looking over the "Millennium" section, we asked to speak to the buyer. Although the buyer was not in, the bookstore manager listened with interest to the explanation given of why Capitalism's World Disorder should be on their bookshelves and would sell. She was impressed with the book's construction and photo signatures as well as with the subject matter. She took an order of two books on the spot and said she would be ordering more.
SPRINGFIELD, Illinois - Young Socialists leader Manuel González, recently returned from an international youth conference in Cuba, and Joel Britton, a member of the Socialist Workers Party's Trade Union Committee, drove from Chicago to Central Illinois September 2-3. We arrived at Freeman United's Crown II mine in time for the Thursday afternoon shift change.
Three miners and one truck driver hauling coal to a power plant in Champaign-Urbana had bought the Militant when we were joined by miner Dave Yard, one of the rank-and-file leaders of the 98-day strike against Freeman last fall. Yard got out of his car, smiling and celebrating the fact that the United Mine Workers union had succeeded - over Freeman's opposition - in scheduling a miners memorial day off with pay the next day, extending the Labor Day weekend to a four-day break. Yard said a miner had put up a sign in the bathhouse: "Enjoy your four days off." The final three miners driving out the gate all stopped and bought the Militant.
Yard arranged for us to meet Carl Taylor, a trustee on the Palmer, Illinois, town council and a leader of a fight to block a very large dairy operation from being set up in the area. Taylor works with farmers and workers who fear that the capitalist cattle confinement set-up will poison the aquifer from which they pump their water. He is a retired Decatur, Illinois, Caterpillar worker and veteran of many United Auto Workers strike struggles against the heavy equipment maker. Yard told Taylor that he and several other miners were starting Miners for Clean Water and joining the fight.
We went on to Springfield to visit a bookstore and libraries recommended by a USWA militant who works at the Bridgestone-Firestone tire plant in Bloomington-Normal and who attended the Active Workers Conference last month and wants to help promote Capitalism's World Disorder. On the way to Springfield, we stopped at the monument to Mary "Mother" Jones in the Union Cemetery in Mt. Olive. The monument commemorates the deaths of some two dozen miners killed during the October 1898 Battle of Virden and in mine strikes in 1932-36. A plaque memorializes this and what could be every revolutionary fighter's epitath: "We count it death to falter, not to die."
GREENSBORO, North Carolina - A team of socialists traveling throughout North Carolina sold three copies of Capitalism's World Disorder to workers over the Labor Day weekend and in the next two days. Two copies of the book were sold to USWA Local 850 members on strike against Continental General Tire in Charlotte, North Carolina, after lengthy political discussions on topics from affirmative action to the forging of a worker and farmer alliance. Two other workers from Winston Salem bought the book off the literature table set up at the Labor Day event in Charlotte. We also visited a number of bookstores and libraries suggested to us by workers.
(More on the results of this team, which is still on the road, will be reported next week.)