The Militant - March 31, 2003 -- Hundreds snap up ‘Militant’ at protests

Vol. 67/No. 10 March 31, 2003

Hundreds snap up ‘Militant’ at protests

BY SAM MANUEL
WASHINGTON, DC--"This whole war is planned to get access to oil," said 22-year-old Reina Galjour from North Carolina, who joined the peace demonstration here on March 15. At a literature table set up by members of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists she bought a subscription to the Spanish-language monthly Perspectiva Mundial and the pamphlet Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle by Thomas Sankara, the leader of a popular uprising that brought a revolutionary government to power in 1983 in the former French colony of Upper Volta. Following the revolution the country was renamed Burkina Faso.

Galjour said that the increasing attacks on the rights of immigrants spurred her to get active. "Books and papers like these will help them know what’s going on and not feel isolated," she said.

At several of the tables SWP and YS members gave soap-box speeches to groups of people who gathered around. These were often followed up with one-on-one discussions in-between the speeches.

"I don’t understand why there is a U.S. base operating in Guantánamo, Cuba, that has prisoners from Afghanistan," asked Viviana, a student from Chile, who now lives in North Carolina. She was glad to find a table with information about Cuba’s socialist revolution.

Participants at the peace marches in Washington, D.C., and in San Francisco bought just over 600 copies of the Militant and $1,300 in Pathfinder titles. At the antiwar actions protesters also purchased a total of 15 subscriptions to the Militant and one subscription to Perspectiva Mundial. Among the best selling titles were Opening Guns of World War III: Washington’s Assault on Iraq; Cuba and the Coming American Revolution; Malcolm X Talks to Young People; Socialism and Man in Cuba; and Che Guevara Talks to Young People.

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Tens of thousands march against war

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