By ERNIE GOTTA
Thanks to our generous supporters and members, Workers’ Voice has successfully completed its first national fund drive since our fusion convention in March. We surpassed our $10,000 goal and raised more than $12,000 between Aug. 29 and Oct. 31. This includes raising over $1100 from more than 50 WV friends and supporters in the Bay Area who attended a fundraising event on Oct. 30. These funds, along with regular dues from our members, will allow our new organization to build a strong foundation going into 2023.
In just seven months, Workers’ Voice has achieved a series of accomplishments that are helping to establish our organization as a real presence in the working class and on the revolutionary socialist left. These successes include building solidarity with detained undocumented workers on strike and hosting and touring leaders from the CSP-Conlutas trade union in Brazil. We’ve sent members to help build the socialist movement in Saskatoon, Canada, and to observe the International Workers League (IWL-FI) world congress in Brazil. We’ve also been active in the movements around the environment, abortion rights, and the rights of immigrants, Black people, and LGBTQIA+ people.
From the classroom to the factory floor, our members are active in union struggles across the country, where we work to build a class-struggle left wing alongside a resurgent labor movement rooted in the militant history of the working class in the U.S.
Our trade-union, mass movement, and student organizing efforts are all being augmented by distribution of our print publication, Workers’ Action. We have printed three issues of the newspaper since March and distributed or received donations for nearly 12,000 copies. The contributions to our fund drive will help us expand our reach via print publications, including a new pamphlet series. Our first three pamphlets have just returned from the printers and will be available at our pop-up bookstores around the country. Our initial titles include, What We Stand For, Organizing Principles, and The Fight for Reproductive Justice. Three additional pamphlets are currently being laid out that focus on our perspectives in the labor movement.
Our new Marxist online class series, which started in October and runs every other Wednesday, is a space for those who are new to revolutionary socialist politics to learn alongside people who have an abundance of experience that they want to share. The first two classes focused on classic texts by Peter Camejo and George Breitman. Our third class, on Nov. 9, will discuss building working-class movements, exploring different methods, and ultimately trying to understand what has worked, what has failed, and why. This discussion will be based on a text that discusses the united front versus the popular front.
Adjacent to our class series, we have produced successful webinars that featured speakers like Chilean miner and union leader Eduardo Gallardo and reproductive justice activist Maria Paula Houghton Martinez, founder of the Medical Group for the Right to Decide in Colombia and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party of Colombia. Our most recent panel included British trade-union activists and socialists Like Martin Ralph, who spoke on the recent strike wave in England. We’ve also hosted a diverse array of speakers on important topics in the U.S., such as housing rights, immigrant rights, and education.
Perhaps one of the defining moments of our young organization focused on international solidarity and material support for Ukrainian union miners. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the call went out from CSP-Conlutas and the International Labor Network of Solidarity and Struggle to build support with the Ukrainian working class resisting the invasion. We answered the call, and our first collective activity was raising funds for the Union of Independent Mineworkers of Kryvyi Rih. In about a month’s time, we raised $5500. This material support has helped sustain their fight against the Russian invasion but also against the bosses of the mines and metal shops, who want to use the war as an excuse to further exploit the workers.
Thank you again to all who made contributions. The collected funds will allow us to continue our work through the periods of upsurge and crisis that will test our program, strategy, and tactics as we look to build a mass working-class party. Our Chuffed account will remain open for a few days beyond the official end of our campaign on Oct. 31, for those reading this article who want to make a final contribution.
You can make a contribution here: