St. Louis leader likes PWWs focus

Only a week after the People’s Weekly World announced that it was kick-starting a renewed campaign for its Worldbuilder program, where readers pledge to make a monthly contribution, the paper has already received several requests to join the program.

Tony Harris, vice president of the St. Louis Gateway District Area Local of the American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO, said that he gives to the paper because of its focus on working people.

“It’s all about letting them advance in this economy that has advanced the big shots,” he said.

“I like getting information from another source than the mainstream media to really get the nuts and bolts of people on the ground so that I can see what the workers are going through in other industries around the country,” he said. “It broadens my view in the labor perspective and what’s actually happening on the ground, in terms of hands-on experience of different labor unions and groups of employees. It’s an alternate source of information.”

Harris echoed the words of other labor union officials and organizers, as well as activists in the movements for peace, equality and democracy. He said that aside from being a source of otherwise unreported — but important — information, the paper also acts as a tool for organizing.

“It’s a tool for me,” he said, “as far as organizing my members, and getting them involved and understanding the difference between what’s happening in a nonunion shop, and learning that the benefits they enjoy is strictly because of the union.”

He added that the paper “gives us the sense of wanting to be involved in solidarity across all labor organizations” because it gives news “from a union perspective, showing what is happening in the United States and around the world, when no union is in the workplace, how those workers are exploited.”

The PWW and Harris have “a great working relationship,” Harris said, because the local PWW bureau and volunteers are “supportive of whatever the APWU is doing.”

These are all reasons why, he said, it’s important to give.

“Without the funds, people would be cut off from information,” Harris said. The PWW distributors “do a very diligent job in whichever rally I’ve ever participated in. They’re out there, handing out the paper, giving them that alternate source of information. I would hate for that information to cease because of non-support.”

Harris was also pleased with the PWW’s election coverage. “It showed what the labor movement has been saying all along: Change in Washington is good for working people.”

To become a Worldbuilder, call (646) 437-5363, or e-mail dmargolis@pww.org. Worldbuilders agree to make a donation of $10 or more per month, either by check or credit card. In turn, they receive a free subscription to the PWW for as long as they remain active builders.