First Published: The Call, Vol. 7, No. 17, May 1, 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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May Day has special significance for our newspaper. Two years ago on May 1 The Call took a big step forward, changing from a monthly to a weekly.
Our second year of weekly publication has seen many new advances. Hundreds more workers now look to The Call–the most widely-circulated communist newspaper in the U.S.–to learn about Marxism-Leninism, to sum up the lessons of their day-to-day struggles, and to get leadership in the fight for socialism.
With the founding of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) last June, The Call became the Party’s official organ, bringing to life for its readers the decisions of the Founding Congress. Since then, our paper has led the way in further uniting U.S. Marxist-Leninists into one single party.
In the mass movements The Call continues to be the main voice opposing the two imperialist superpowers, criticizing the modern revisionists, and defending Marxism-Leninism. In these pages working people can learn the difference between genuine and fake revolutionaries, between those who are fighting to lead the working class to victory and those who would set it up for slaughter.
It was The Call, for example, that spoke straight from the coalfields about the betrayal of the UMW leadership and their phony “communist” defenders in the CPUSA during the historic miners strike.
It is The Call which has covered the tremendous Soviet buildup in Africa, consistently exposing the USSR as a fascist superpower and the most dangerous source of a new world war.
More and more people throughout the U.S. also look to The Call as the best source of information about socialist countries and especially about China and its Party’s great victory over the traitorous “gang of four.” We have earned respect for defending and applying Chairman Mao’s brilliant theory of the three worlds, which has come under heavy attack from opportunist forces during the last year.
At this moment a delegation from our staff is visiting China and Kampuchea, getting reports and interviews to share with our readers. We’ve also been able to publish regular articles from our correspondent in Peking.
What more has The Call been able to do as the weekly paper of a Party that now works in cities across the country and in hundreds of factories and communities?
Reports on local struggles, along with a communist analysis of the capitalist crisis, helped organize thousands of people to March for Jobs in Washington last February 18.
While the steel bosses were shutting down plants and blaming it on foreign imports, our paper exposed their schemes and those of their agents in the workers’ movement. Our series armed steelworkers to fight these attacks and pointed to socialism as the final solution.
Our youth coverage has expanded to include a regular youth page and a column written by the CYO. A series of articles on the Bakke case linked this fight to the whole system of oppression against national minorities and the struggle to overthrow it.
Over the year, our paper has become even more rooted among the masses of workers and oppressed peoples. Since it expanded to 20 pages in October, a greater number of articles are written by correspondents from the shop floors, the housing projects, the schools and communities.
The past year has also seen important breakthroughs for The Call’s work in minority languages. El Clarin is now seven pages instead of five.
Our first publication in Tagalog, a bilingual supplement on the Filipina nurses’ struggle, was enthusiastically received in the Filipino communities.
Of course, there is still much room for improvement. In particular, we must still work at making our paper more popular and lively by practicing the mass line and improving our links with the fighting workers. Our coverage of the many movements against racism and national oppression is still at too low a level. We are also working to increase our cultural work and make revolutionary culture more a part of our movement.
We need to bring The Call to thousands of new readers. We need to vastly increase the number of subscribers, both to enable people to read The Call regularly and to provide needed income for expansion. While our number of sustainers has more than tripled in the last year, we need to win many more people to the importance of supporting the paper financially.
On this anniversary of our weekly paper, we call on all our readers to make a special May Day contribution to The Call.
Support the voice of the people’s struggle!