The Cleveland club is gearing up for all out involvement in the November elections and has launched an innovative Marxist education project. The club is taking part in the monthly summer AFL-CIO canvasses in June, July and August. The club has called for the central labor council to hold a local Solidarity Day Rally where each union could promote its special issues and invite all of labor’s allies to take part. The club also assigned comrades to take part in the Poor People’s Campaign, again to increase “street heat” and drive home the importance of the issues at play in November.
Several members are active in the Democratic Ward Club and County Central Committee. In this way the club will help mobilize voters to defeat right-wing extremist candidates in November. They will be canvassing their precincts, doing literature drops and processing data.
During the primary, the club supported Dennis Kucinich’s campaign for governor. Unfortunately, he lost, but the club developed good relationships with his volunteers. One joined the “Better World’s Birthday Party” reading club that meets weekly to discuss Rick Nagin’s new book, “A Better World in Birth: Principles of Scientific Socialism/ A Handbook for Revolutionary Change”. The reading club was organized by one of the club members, mostly in their 20’s. They meet every Sunday and has grown to 15 participants. This could become the basis for forming a new party club. This discussion is building understanding of the importance of grass roots movements, being active in the elections as well as the need for socialism.
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Rick Nagin, Ohio correspondent for the People's World, has written for the paper and its predecessors since 1970. He has been active for many years in Cleveland politics and the labor movement.
He helped elect Cleveland's first Hispanic city councilman and served as his Executive Assistant for over seven years. Rick has run for public office a number of times and received 45 percent of the vote in a race for City Council in 2009. He is the Democratic Leader in Cleveland Ward 14 and serves on the County Democratic Party Executive Committee.
A member of The Newspaper Guild, Communications Workers of America, he is a delegate to the North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor and serves on its Political Coordinators and Labor Day Parade committees. He is on the Executive Board of the Greater Cleveland Labor Council for Latin American Advancement and represents the People's World on the steering committee of Cleveland Jobs With Justice.
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