BY LAURA GARZA
NEW YORK - From a table on a street corner in Chinatown in Manhattan to the Puerto Rican Day parade in downtown Newark, New Jersey, dozens of Militant distributors fanned out in this area on Sunday, September 24, to introduce new readers to the socialist newsweekly and the monthly magazine Perspectiva Mundial. Teams of three, four, and five were dispatched to working class communities in Brooklyn; Queens; Patterson, New Jersey; and elsewhere to go door to door to sell subscriptions to the Militant. Sunday was picked as the best day to get all the supporters out on the streets since many people in this area work on Saturdays.
The campaign day in the New York/northern New Jersey area was a great success with some 90 people participating in weekend teams. Eleven Militant subscriptions were sold, and 17 new people signed up to subscribe to Perspectiva Mundial. Close to 200 single issues of the Militant were sold, with a couple dozen people asking to be called back about a subscription.
This effort kicked off the first of an eight-week international campaign to sell 1,950 introductory subscriptions to the Militant, 525 subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial, and 750 copies of the Marxist magazine New International.
Reports from cities around the world have begun to come in on the initial efforts in the international sales drive. We will print the results of the first week in the next issue of the Militant. In the meantime, we print below a few reports on the first fruits of our efforts.
DETROIT - Distributors of the Militant here arranged to have additional copies of issues no. 35 and no. 36 flown in just before the weekend because single-issue sales were going so well. The Militant's feature coverage of the battle being waged by newspaper workers in Detroit to defend their union has made it a popular item.
On Saturday, September 23 a team sold 12 singles and 1 subscription while introducing the paper in student housing in East Lansing. At Saturday night picket lines two renewals were sold to members of the United Steelworkers union and the United Auto Workers union who had come out to support the newspaper strike. On Sunday a door-to-door sales team near the Sterling Heights newspaper printing plant sold two subscriptions and four single issues in an hour.
- Steve Marshall
TWIN CITIES, Minnesota - "I want that paper, I have to have that paper," said a middle-aged Black guy who answered the door and listened to about 30 seconds of a description of the Militant. He explained that he is a Teamsters union steward at the University of Minnesota Hospital and they have been working without a contract since July. He wanted first-hand information about how his union brothers and sisters were doing in Detroit and what he could learn from them. Four teams went door-to-door and sold four subscriptions to the Militant on the first weekend of the drive. And a team to Austin, Minnesota, won a new reader to Perspectiva Mundial. A copy of New International was sold to a coworker also.
- Michael Pennock
CLEVELAND, Ohio - An AIDS Walk here, Oberlin College, John Carroll University, and working class neighborhoods in Cleveland were the sites for discussions as Militant supporters in this area joined the effort to win new subscribers. A woman who overheard someone explaining that it was a socialist newspaper called out to her husband on the porch "Buy it!" The retired couple are long-time trade unionists. Her father worked in the steel mill at WCI, where workers are now locked out by the company. They are looking forward to reading coverage of the events at WCI and to getting a working-class point of view.
A team went out to the picket line and to neighborhoods in Warren, Ohio, where the WCI workers are locked out. Supporters from Pittsburgh joined in the sales effort and in building solidarity for the WCI workers.
Another subscription was sold to a college student who said he is questioning the value of what is being taught in college classes and what students are being trained to become.
- Carol James
LARES, Puerto Rico - The international sales drive was kicked off in Puerto Rico with a successful day of sales at the activities to commemorate the 127th anniversary of the Grito de Lares - the uprising on September 23, 1868, to declare independence from Spain. Two subscriptions were sold to Perspectiva Mundial as well as one copy of the Spanish New International featuring the article "Imperialism's March Toward Fascism and War."
One woman who purchased a subscription to Perspectiva Mundial said she had been shown the magazine when she spoke with activists at the World Conference in Solidarity with Cuba in Havana last November.
Other sales from the table included 13 individual copies of Perspectiva Mundial, 2 of the Militant, and $86 in Pathfinder literature.
- Ron Richards
PARIS - Some $1,100 of Pathfinder literature was sold at a table set up at the giant annual fair organized by the French Communist Party newspaper L'Humanité September 15- 17. Despite the steep decline of the French CP, tens of thousands attend the fair. L'Humanité reported 300,000 tickets were purchased this year.
Seventeen copies of Nouvelle International no. 5 were sold. as well as nine other issues of Nouvelle International and its sister publications in Spanish and Farsi . Six trial subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial and one to the Militant were also sold. In addition, a good start was made on a special month-long drive in France to sell 30 copies of the newly issued French-language Pathfinder pamphlet The Second Declaration of Havana; nine copies were sold.
A number of Spanish-language titles were also sold for a total of $160, including many items that had the writings or speeches of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
- Derek Jeffers