BY MARY MARTIN
WASHINGTON, D.C. - "Hey, What's that headline? `Nelson Mandela: Cuba shared the trenches with us.' Tell me about this newspaper, I want to get one."
That kind of comment accompanied many sales of the Militant newspaper to participants in the Million Man March, according to John Staggs of Philadelphia. He was part of one Militant sales team that sold 70 copies of the paper throughout the day, including 43 copies at daybreak to march participants arriving on busses from Philadelphia, New York, and other East Coast cities. Two co-workers from his UAW- organized plant who Staggs didn't know well were surprised to see him there, asked him what the paper was about, and bought copies.
A bright blue banner above the Socialist Workers Party booth on Constitution Avenue announced that writings of Che, Lenin, Malcolm X, Mandela, Marx, and others were for sale and drew the attention of hundreds at the march.
Brian Taylor, a member of the Young Socialists in D.C., helped staff the SWP booth. "One person who looked at the Militant's coverage of workers' struggles for freedom and dignity in Quebec and Ireland asked, `What do the workers in Quebec and Ireland have to do with Black rights here in the United States? Can what they do help us here?' I told him yes, and why I thought so. In the course of the discussion, he decided to buy a copy of the Militant and learn more about the fights being waged by other workers around the world," Taylor said.
By the end of the day more than 300 copies of the Militant and some $600 worth of Pathfinder books had been sold. About 50 volunteers participated in the sales. Books and the pamphlets sold included the Communist Manifesto, Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle by Thomas Sankara, and many books on Cuba and by Malcolm X. Six subscriptions to the Militant were sold by teams of salespersons from Brooklyn, New York, and Newark, New Jersey.
Most of those who approached the main SWP booth and several smaller Socialist Workers literature tables got a copy of the October 21 Cuba rally leaflet, often as an introduction to a discussion on Cuba's revolutionary role in helping to bring down apartheid in South Africa.
Janice Lynn from Washington, D.C., who staffed one of the satellite tables of revolutionary literature, described how one person who disagreed with the politics represented by the books tried to discourage people from stopping at the table. Lynn said, "He told people `keep moving' and `don't talk to them.' An older Black worker who purchased a Militant and our last copy of Malcolm X on Afro-American History went over to tell this individual that he had no right to tell people what they could or couldn't read, that Pathfinder Press has kept Malcolm X's writings in print, and that these books were important."