Dear readers,
We are entering the final weeks of our Fund Drive, even as we deepen our links with the mounting struggles of working people from coast to coast.
For example, in the next several editions of the PWW/NM you will read still more about the Free Trade Area of the Americas meetings in Miami. That coverage comes firsthand from our reporters and readers. If you were there, you felt the camaraderie and exhilaration of being with the people in the streets calling for fair trade, not “free trade.”
But if your only source of info was the corporate media, then you either saw the Miami police spin about so-called “violent protesters,” or you saw nothing at all – a news blackout about the government attacks on democratic rights of free speech and freedom of assembly.
Several PWW/Mundo reporters were on the scene, giving a firsthand account of the issues, the righteous struggle for economic justice, democracy and the truth about how Miami became a “police state.” While the corporate media was embedded with the police, reporters wearing gas masks and helmets, the PWW was embedded with the trade unionists, students, environmentalists, peace and faith-based activists.
While we were in Miami we also accomplished the following:
• Co-sponsored a forum with the Communist Party USA on “A Socialist Vision of the Americas” with speakers from Canada, Venezuela and the U.S. Over 50 people attended, including reporters from the Miami media.
• Distributed 9,000-10,000 copies of the PWW/Mundo. It’s hard to get a precise count because the police riot and attacks disrupted the whole freedom of assembly, freedom of speech “thing.”
• Obtained eyewitness accounts and reports of the FTAA protests and police repression and reported them as quickly and as accurately as possible to you, our valued readers.
That’s why we need to complete our Fund Drive. We need you to help us make this fighting, working-class newspaper even better and more widely read.
The People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo Fund Drive runs from Sept. 1-Dec. 15.
Donate online at www.pww.org or call (212) 924-2523, ext. 363, for credit card donations over the phone. Checks or money orders payable to Long View Publishing Co. can be sent to 235 W. 23rd St. New York, NY 10011.
In peace and struggle,
Terrie Albano, Editor
P.S. Our readers have held several successful events. Banquets in Northern California and Illinois raised over $6,000 each; a luncheon in New York featuring Tim Wheeler, former editor and now Washington correspondent, also raised over $6,000; and Doug Allan, a Canadian health care coalition organizer and expert, spoke in three cities helping to raise several thousand dollars. But we can’t stop there. We still need your donations to make our goal of $200,000.
Comments