14) PV FUND DRIVE STARTS MARCH 1
Nothing good ever came easy, as the old saying goes. That has been true for every gain achieved by the working class over past centuries of organizing to win shorter hours, better pay, pensions, workers' compensation, public education, or universal health care.
It's the same story in the arena of ideas. From the moment the printing press was invented, right up to the birth of the Internet, the wealthy have had a powerful monopoly over the mass media... with occasional important exceptions. Today in Canada, with the exception of the CBC and some community broadcasters, the media is overwhelmingly owned by a handful of private companies, and these giants are swallowing up the competition. For example, between 1990 and 2005, corporate mergers and takeovers in Canada reduced the number of independently‑owned daily newspapers from 17.3% of the total to a mere 1%.
Adjusting the zoom, we know that big transnationals dominate the world‑wide news and entertainment business, exercising nearly total control over the flow of ideas, imposing their capitalist, right‑wing analysis on every facet of the media.
Fortunately, the working class and its allies have always found ways to combat this attempted form of thought control. In one way, the labour press and radical publications like People's Voice have an edge over the monopolies - we don't have to invent lies to prop up the profit system. In our pages, readers find stories and facts which mesh with their own daily experience. We help clarify a confusing world and bring working people together, instead of muddying the waters to create divisions.
But don't take our word for it. Check out the comments on this page by several well‑known activists in a wide range of people's movements. They value the role of People's Voice as a source of progressive news and ideas, and we hope you agree.
If you think it's important to have a Canada‑wide newspaper which supports the locked‑out Hamilton steelworkers, the movements to defend public education and health care, the people of Palestine, please be generous. If you value a working class press which celebrates International Women's Day and May Day every year, please dig deep when you get your appeal letter in the mail.
You need us, and we certainly need you to help us raise $50,000 yet again in 2011. With your help, we can keep our voice for a socialist future alive in the fight against the capitalist media giants!
Once again this year, your mail appeal letter will offer a gift in appreciation of your solidarity. For each donation of $100, contributors will have their choice of a PV 2011 Calendar, a framed portrait of a revolutionary fighter, or a copy of "Great October," a DVD dedicated to the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917.
(The above article is from the March 1-15, 2011, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)