The Pathfinder bookstore here was packed with more than 50 people, from half a dozen new Militant readers to several veteran worker-correspondents. The audience, in a festive mood, devoured a delicious dinner, looked through bound volumes and framed covers of the Militant from high points in the class struggle over the years, and stayed around enjoying conversation and refreshments until well after the end of the program.

Some of those present commented that when they had publicized the event among co-workers, friends, and collaborators, a common reaction was “Seventy-five years!”—expressing surprise at the socialist paper’s staying power and consistency.

Malapanis introduced Martín Koppel, a Militant staff writer and editor of its sister magazine in Spanish, Perspectiva Mundial. “The Militant’s continuity doesn’t start in 1928,” Koppel said. “It starts in October 1917, when workers and farmers in Russia stormed the heavens, took political power, and changed the world. They were led by a revolutionary working-class party, the Bolsheviks.” He explained how the Militant’s first editor, James P. Cannon, a founding leader of the Communist Party in the United States in 1919, was expelled from that party in 1928 along with other revolutionists for defending the course charted by V.I. Lenin in opposition to the policies implemented by a rising bureaucratic caste headed by Joseph Stalin. The Militant was central to the building of the Socialist Workers Party along this revolutionary course.

Koppel spoke about the newspaper’s early history—from its founding to the working-class battles that forged the Congress of Industrial Organizations, to the fight against the second world imperialist slaughter, to the post-war labor upsurge, which had a direct impact on the Militant, whose circulation shot up by 22,000 in a single subscription drive.  
 
The ‘Militant’ and revolutionary Cuba
Luis Miranda, director of Casa de las Américas, an organization of Cuban-Americans who defend Cuba’s socialist revolution, said he first heard about the Militant in the late 1950s from Cuban revolutionary exiles who belonged to the Julio Antonio Mella Club in New York. “These experienced compañeros told us that our library had to have a collection of the Militant,” he said.

Referring to members of Casa Cuba, which was founded in 1957 and later became Casa de las Américas, Miranda said, “Our confidence in this paper increased in the first years of the revolution” when the Militant ran extensive coverage of the Cuban Revolution. The fact that the revolution “was being analyzed in the Militant by American comrades who had traveled to Cuba, and they were writing articles explaining the firmness of the revolution,” reaffirmed the conviction of the Casa Cuba members about the important place of the Cuban Revolution in the world.

Miranda also underscored the importance of the Militant for political prisoners. He recalled that in the 1970s he had received requests for copies of the Militant from Rafael Cancel Miranda, the Puerto Rican independence fighter who spent 27 years in U.S. prisons. He said Cancel Miranda used the paper as part of the political work he carried out in the prison. “We now have five comrades in prison who are accused of terrorism—right here in this terrorist state,” Miranda said—referring to five Cuban revolutionaries imprisoned in this country on false espionage charges. Recently one of them had commented to him that he counted on regularly receiving the Militant in the prison.

Messages were also sent to the meeting by Rafael Cancel Miranda and Luis Rosa, another former Puerto Rican political prisoner, and by Palestinian activist Farouk Abdel-Muhti, currently locked up in a New Jersey jail (see greetings in this issue).

Olga Rodríguez, a longtime member of the Socialist Workers Party and worker-correspondent for the Militant, spoke about how she and thousands of other radicalizing youth in the 1970s first came into contact with the Militant as they protested Washington’s war against the Vietnamese people, and how it helped convince her to join the socialist movement for the duration. She took up the irreplaceable role the paper played in analyzing developments in the rise of Chicano nationalism, including the establishment of the Southwest Bureau of the Militant to cover these developments.

Naomi Craine, a socialist worker in New York who served on the Militant staff through most of the 1990s and was the editor for several years, spoke about the Militant’s proud tradition of defending all class-war prisoners, regardless of their political views—from the 18 Teamsters and Socialist Workers Party leaders jailed during World War II; to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed on frame-up charges of espionage in 1953; to Black rights fighter Robert F. Williams; Native American militant Leonard Peltier; and the five Cuban revolutionaries jailed in the United States today.

Also speaking was Stu Singer, who worked in the 1960s with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, including in Lowndes County, Alabama where a big struggle developed over the right of Black workers and farmers to register to vote. He explained how the Militant helped organize a tour of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization—the only paper that covered the story of that civil rights fight at the time.

As a correspondent before and during a stint on the Militant staff, Singer helped cover the Steelworkers Fight Back campaign of Ed Sadlowski in the late 1970s to democratize the Steelworkers union and the 110-day strike by the United Mine Workers of America in 1978-79.

Carlos Samaniego, 25, a construction worker, explained that he first came into contact with the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial when he ran into a literature table at Union Square just before the U.S.-led war on Iraq. “The first issue of Perspectiva Mundial I read was the April issue,” he said. “The experience of reading an editorial rejecting the myth that France and Germany are promoters of peace had a big impact on me.” He explained that the socialist magazine’s perspective “fit right into the real world with ideas and revolutionary perspectives that spoke in defense of my class. The presence of everyone who is here at this meeting tonight is proof that the Militant is in the interests of the working class.”

The final speaker, Norton Sandler, had just participated in a celebration in London marking the 25th anniversary of Pathfinder Books at a central location in that capital city. “There’s nothing more important than distributing our revolutionary program, which is a guide to action,” Sandler said. He pointed to work underway to secure space to house a larger Pathfinder bookstore in Manhattan, the national offices of the Socialist Workers Party, the headquarters branch of the Socialist Workers Party, and the editorial offices of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial. “The goal,” Sandler said, “is to have an address in New York City that will become as well known as the address of Pathfinder Books in London is today.”

Nearly $900 was raised in a collection to help cover volunteer expenses for the full-time search that is helping to secure the new space.

In the discussion that followed, Arthur Hughes, who served on the Militant staff as a copy editor in the 1980s, spoke about the importance the staff has always put on getting the facts right, and rigorously sourcing them, as crucial to producing a paper that serves working people. George Tselos recounted how as a student attracted to the revolution he traveled to Cuba after the triumph, and wrote about what he saw. Now, he said, he takes great satisfaction in the work he does as a volunteer for the Militant entering subscriptions into the database to ensure all subscribers get their weekly paper in a timely way.

Olga Rodríguez contributed to this article.
 
 
Related articles:
Cleveland event: ‘I hope ‘Militant’ stays in business for a long time’
Anti-imperialist fighters greet ‘Militant’ anniversary  
 
 
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