Vol. 75/No. 38      October 24, 2011

Writing from Houston, Jacquie Henderson reports sending $52 to the Socialist Workers Party’s Capital Fund that she received as an “attendance bonus” from the bosses at the machine shop where she works.

“This is the blood money that we get if we miss not one minute of work,” writes Henderson. “We work a mandatory six days a week. I was too new on the job to disqualify myself from the ‘bonus’ last month, so I’m sending it to help build the party.”

Blood money is a term communist workers use to describe so-called bonus payments handed out by capitalist owners or their government as bribes, most often to press workers into accepting speedup, wage cuts, concession contracts, and dangerous work conditions. The Capital Fund helps finance long-range plans of the party.

Often opportunities for these contributions come from unexpected sources. “A weird windfall” is how Wendy Lyons from Los Angeles described her recent donation to the fund. She was helping some friends find an apartment. “I asked a landlord next door to me if she had any apartments in the neighborhood for rent,” writes Lyons. “Turned out she had quite a few empty places. The landlord said she would give me $300 if they took the apartment. They got the apartment and the party gets the $300.”

—BRIAN WILLIAMS