QUEENS, N.Y – “This is really excellent,” a woman in attendance at the closing rally of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride said about the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo. “I’m gonna make my kids read it and write a paper on this stuff for their school.”
With a crowd of over 100,000 people, a park is not likely to stay clean. Such was the case at Flushing Meadow Park, where all sorts of flyers, cups and other litter were scattered everywhere. However, discarded copies of the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo were largely absent, even though 10,000 copies were distributed. Those lucky enough to receive a copy – there were only enough copies for one out of every ten people – generally carried theirs around for hours.
The papers were distributed quickly, even though distributors were often stopped by people wanting to offer their praise.
Jessica Marshall, who helped distribute the PWW/NM, said, “A friend of mine was the captain on the Miami bus, and he said that in Charleston someone was passing out papers and the Freedom Riders on his bus read it with enthusiasm … most of them read it cover to cover and said that really was talking about stuff that was important to them. A lot of them didn’t speak English and thought it was so wonderful that there was a section in Spanish.”
The riders in one of the buses coming from Los Angeles were not lucky enough to have papers for everyone. “There were only two copies of the paper on the bus, and the freedom riders were vying for who got to read them!” one of the riders said.
Luckily, no one has to wait for a demonstration of 100,000 people to get their next issue of the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo. Of course, the PWW and its supporters plan to get the paper out everywhere possible, including at smaller demonstrations, union halls, street corners, but people who want to read it regularly can subscribe, for only $30 a year.
Readers, both new and long-time, recognize the importance of the PWW/NM, the only newspaper so closely linked with the struggles of labor and the community for peace, democracy, and all the other important struggles. Because the paper is so important, we need to keep it running. To do that, we need to fund it, and that is exactly why it is so vital that everyone who cares about the PWW/NM donate as much as they can to the paper’s fund drive. The PWW/NM is on its way to reaching the more than $200,000 that we need, but there is still a long way to go – donate today!
The author can be reached at dmargolis@cpusa.org
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