The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 74/No. 42      November 8, 2010

 
Party-Building Fund gains
 
BY LAURA GARZA  
Supporters of the effort to raise $98,000 to fund the Socialist Workers Party have gotten a boost from meetings in local areas and raises in pledges that now bring the total of local goals to almost $100,000.

Mary Martin from Seattle reports the October 16 fund meeting there featuring the Socialist Workers candidate for governor of California, Lea Sherman, drew 43 people. “Five people attended who we had met during street and campus campaign activity in recent weeks,” Martin wrote, “including an unemployed teacher who is Black and a recent law school graduate who can’t find work and is facing a load of school loan debt coming due.”

More than $500 in new pledges were made and over $3,000 was collected at the event.

One of the participants asked, “Why don’t socialists and other rights fighters get together on election campaigns?” “Our campaign is organized around a working-class program to defend workers’ interests,” Sherman said. “Whether a group or individuals call themselves ‘socialist’ or not, we look to what they stand for and do. We will join with others, and have done so in the past, to advance a perspective of the working class taking power.”

She pointed to examples given in the book Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power of workers who ran campaigns independent of the Democrats and Republicans.

From San Francisco Joel Britton reported that in the days before an October 23 event to benefit the party-building fund, pledges and contributions totaling more than $6,000 were received.

Frank Forrestal, a leader of the party from Minneapolis, spoke on “Why the working class needs a revolutionary party,” along with Sherman. The event drew 35 people.
 
 
Related articles:
Party-building fund Sept. 11-Nov. 9 (chart)  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home