BY LAURA GARZA
Nobody who visits the Socialist Workers Party headquarters in Brooklyn can miss the big, colorful chart that marks the progress of the campaign to sell 160 subscriptions to the Militant. Different colored post-it notes denote subscriptions sold on community sales, on the job, on campuses, at political events, or through other activities. Socialist workers and youth going out on sales teams check it daily for the latest figures.
The stepped-up pace of activity that is characteristic of a campaign effort to make a goal is what the chart in Brooklyn shows - and it's what is needed in every city to get on target to sell 1,950 subscriptions to new readers of the Militant over eight weeks. After three weeks we have 593 new subscribers, or 30 percent of the goal, putting us 8 percent behind where we should be. There are also 228 new subscribers to the monthly Spanish-language magazine Perspectiva Mundial, and 187 copies of various editions of the Marxist magazine New International have been sold.
Taking advantage of Sunday, when most people can spend all day campaigning, has been the backbone of the subscription drive, says Marty Anderson, who is coordinating the campaign in Brooklyn. The day begins with at least two dozen Militant supporters getting together for a brief huddle before being dispatched to working-class communities.
"The Sunday teams stay out four hours and it's common you will get a subscription near the end," Anderson said. "It's just a matter of the longer you're out, you meet people and have more chances of finding the ones who are interested in the paper."
Most teams in Brooklyn stay out until they meet their own subscription goal. At the end of the Sunday sales effort, all the teams get back together to assess collectively the results of the day.
In the last few weeks the sales activities have been combined with publicizing the October 21 demonstration in New York City against the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba. At the State University of New York in Stony Brook, Long Island, on October 9, a team from Brooklyn met a young Dominican who said he and some friends had organized 17 people to attend the march. Four people bought subs to the Militant, one to Perspectiva Mundial, and one New International was sold.
The Sunday mobilizations have accounted for the majority of subscriptions sold in the New York area. Socialist workers are now organizing to designate some weekday evenings as target sales times and to extend the Sunday spirit into the week. This means setting aside all meetings and other tasks to make a priority of winning new readers of the socialist press and campaigning to build events, from the march against the U.S. embargo of Cuba to demonstrations in support of affirmative action to protests against police brutality.
Martín Koppel, from Brooklyn reports, "If you don't sign up to participate in a sales team during the week, someone will ask you about your plans. That's good; that's how you know you're in a drive, when everyone is expected to join in."
These steps are necessary to shift into high gear and make plans for the nine-day target sales effort October 28- November 5.
Please fax the Militant office if you have planned a special team or are organizing a visit to an area in your region and want to invite others to join you, so we can get this information into the next issue and help coordinate some of the efforts internationally.
In Seattle teams to the region have helped Militant supporters maximize the time spent out selling. They report that with the subscriptions that are on the way to our offices, they have reached 50 percent of their goal of winning 70 new Militant readers. Scott Breen reported an all- day team at Washington State University in Pullman resulted in seven new Militant subscribers and one new subscriber to Perspectiva Mundial.
Another result of that team's work, Breen said, is the October 20 meeting sponsored by the Chicano student organization MEChA at WSU on "Cuba Today: a report from the Cuba Lives International Youth Festival."
The visit by Fidel Castro to speak at the United Nations is an opportunity to sell the socialist press at a time when millions will be hearing the Cuban leader.