A SERIOUS APPEAL

Everyone has to make decisions on which bills to pay and which to forego. This is not a bill. But it’s a serious appeal for money.

Why is giving to Workers World newspaper important? Perhaps this 1931 poem by Bertolt Brecht says it best:

A Bed for the Night

I hear that in New York
At the corner of 26th Street and Broadway
A man stands every evening during the winter months

And gets beds for the homeless there
By appealing to passers-by

It won’t change the world
It won’t improve relations among men
It will not shorten the age of exploitation
But a few men have a bed for the night
For a night the wind is kept from them

The snow meant for them falls on the roadway.

Don’t put down the book on reading this, man.

A few people have a bed for the night
For a night the wind is kept from them
The snow meant for them falls on the roadway
But it won’t change the world
It won’t improve relations among men
It will not shorten the age of exploitation.

Brecht wrote this in the depths of the Great Depression. In his native Germany, things were even worse. So why did he write about New York?

Because all over the world, progressives realized that what happened in the United States would either advance or hold back their own struggles for social change. This holds true even more so today. From Bolivia to Greece, from France to the Philippines, the people are hoping for a renewal here of class struggle against the world-striding oligarchs on Wall Street and the warlords in Washington.

Brecht was reminding those whose hearts were touched by the misery of the unemployed that much more had to be done than just putting a coin or even a bill in a supplicant’s cup.

Capitalism at that time was in crisis from Germany to the U.S. But it recovered, largely through the most destructive war in history, in which 70 million people died and the U.S., unleashing the destructive potential of the atom bomb, became the world’s superpower.

Now we are in another great crisis and the same questions remain. Will the suffering caused by capitalism usher in a movement of the masses strong enough to challenge the hedge fund barons and the foreclosing bankers? Or will the rightwing and their corporate sponsors divide the workers with racism, homophobia, vilification of Muslims and attacks on immigrants?

Workers World is one of the very few remaining newspapers on the left in this country that every week puts out both a print and online edition.

It is the ONLY one that consistently gives a voice to activists in the Black, Latino/a, lesbian/gay/bi/trans/queer and immigrant movements while also standing up against imperialist warmongering aimed at Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Korea.

It is the ONLY one that fights for socialism at home while recognizing and supporting the gains that countries trying to build socialism have made despite Cold War threats, blockades and sanctions.

We’re caught in the economic squeeze, too. We need to raise $60,000 to keep publishing our paper. It’s not for salaries. We have an all-volunteer staff. It’s for rent and printers’ bills and postage and all the other necessities.

Please, think seriously about what this newspaper means to you and help us make our goal.

Click here to DONATE NOW