WV Sub Drive

Extending the Reach of the Revolutionary Press

During this year’s successful Workers Vanguard subscription campaign, Spartacist League and Spartacus Youth Club comrades introduced our biweekly revolutionary Marxist press to over 500 new subscribers across the country, with some locals far exceeding their quotas. In the lead-up to the midterm elections, many people we engaged had illusions in the anti-Trump “resistance,” whose main purpose is to rally disaffected youth and workers back into the Democratic Party, the other capitalist party of racism and war. At the same time, they wanted to check out our communist perspective.

A team of comrades, including from the Grupo Espartaquista de México, the ICL’s Mexican section, made an important trip to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where we sold our bilingual article on the government’s racist targeting of Mexican Americans in the borderlands (“U.S. Denies Passports to Citizens/​EE.UU. niega pasaportes a ciudadanos,” WV No. 1140, 21 September). Students and workers were interested in our coverage of Trump’s escalating war on immigrant rights as well as our opposition to the Democratic Party and our fight to build an internationalist vanguard party. In Texas and elsewhere, those preferring to read in Spanish got our Suplementos en español, leaflets of translated WV articles. Some also subscribed to Espartaco, the Spanish-language press of the GEM.

Our trip to the borderlands provided a small but useful window into the second-class status of the largely Mexican-derived population in the area. In towns a few miles away from Mexico, most people speak Spanish fluently, but cannot read or write in the language. This underlines that the struggles against “English only” chauvinism and for quality, bilingual education are crucial for the whole population to become literate in both English and Spanish.

In a national political climate that has become increasingly hostile to the elementary right to abortion, our packet of WV articles addressing women’s oppression was a popular free “giveaway” with subscriptions this year. Our team visiting New Orleans reported that the article on black socialist and abortion doctor Edgar Keemer (WV No. 1138, 24 August) was welcomed by many young women in a state where only three clinics remain and a recent bill bans the procedure after 15 weeks. As in years past, placards at our literature tables calling “For Free Abortion on Demand!” sparked interest among those seeking an answer to decades of attacks against abortion and to the overall anti-woman onslaught under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

On several campuses across the country our signs calling to “Break with the Democrats!” were in sharp distinction to the enthusiasm over the New York Congressional primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Our front-page article in WV No. 1139 (7 September) exposed how the liberal electoralism of the DSA and Ocasio-Cortez has nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with sprucing up the tainted image of the Democrats.

We made particular efforts to distribute our press to longshore workers at ports on the East, Gulf and West Coasts. During the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Labor Day rally in Los Angeles, our article on fallen ILWU militant Byron Jacobs, a white longshoreman killed on the docks in Longview, Washington, when a mooring line snapped, was much appreciated by members of this powerful, integrated union. Also popular was a piece written by our comrades in Greece covering the dockworkers strike at the Port of Piraeus against the Chinese shipping giant COSCO (WV No. 1137, 27 July). In these sales, we emphasized the need for joint struggle of all port workers and for a campaign to organize the unorganized among the port truckers and warehouse and intermodal workers.

During our sub drive, we intersected strikes by hotel workers that spread from Chicago to Boston and various other cities, including in the Bay Area. Joining the picket lines and rallies in solidarity with the strikers, our comrades handed out our leaflet titled “Victory to Chicago Hotel Strike!” reprinted in WV No. 1140 (21 September). In our coverage of the strikes at Marriott hotels (WV No. 1142, 19 October), we noted that the strike slogan “One Job Should Be Enough!” speaks to how the capitalist rulers have so squeezed workers in this country that they are forced to work multiple jobs just to survive.

Included with an annual subscription to WV was a brand-new issue of our Black History and the Class Struggle publication, which reflects our commitment to black liberation through socialist revolution. As a result of efforts by our comrades, more than one library added a complete set of Black History to its collection. The new issue, which includes 2017 articles on the fascist mobilization in Charlottesville and the tearing down of Confederate monuments, was popular with students at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, many of whom were involved in toppling the “Silent Sam” Confederate monument on their campus. An article in WV No. 1139 defended these courageous protesters. Like other leftists on campuses nationwide, they have had to confront violent provocations by fascists and white-supremacists.

After one Howard University student read our criticism of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, where we expose how the cops and Klan work hand in hand, he tweeted that he was “shook” and encouraged others to talk to us. Our Leninist press is not only committed to telling the truth but is also a collective organizer for the vanguard party we aspire to build that can change society. Workers Vanguard welcomes all our new readers and encourages comments. We congratulate our determined and fiery comrade Gene in New York for selling the most subscriptions (again)!