The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.17           April 29, 1996 
 
 
Campaign To Sell Pathfinder  

BY SARA LOBMAN
Vladimira Chávez was one of the young people who stopped by the Socialist Workers campaign table the first night of the conference of the student group MEChA (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán) in Edinburg, Texas. The table featured Pathfinder books and pamphlets, the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, and other literature. The high school senior from southern California picked up four pamphlets - Che Guevara and the Fight for Socialism Today, The Second Declaration of Havana, Malcolm X Talks to Young People, and On the Jewish Question - and signed up for more information on the Young Socialists. She came back the next day, after finishing the Malcolm X pamphlet and half of the pamphlet on Guevara, for further discussions on the Cuban revolution and the YS.

A student from the University of California in Davis bought a copy of the Communist Manifesto. He had recently purchased a copy of Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto Che Guevara from a table set up at his school. Another student, from Pan American University, who bought a copy of the Militant, came back the next day to buy Episodes.

Participants in the MEChA conference bought 25 Pathfinder books and pamphlets, as well as 16 Pathfinder catalogs, 10 copies of the Militant, and one Militant subscription. Four copies of The Politics of Chicano Liberation, recently reissued by Pathfinder, were sold. A student from the College of Marin in northern California came by the table several times during the conference to look through the book, explaining that he only had $20 for the entire weekend. Finally he made his decision. "I just have to get it," he explained.

Pathfinder books and pamphlets were also sold at socialist campaign tables at the April 14 "March to Fight the Right" in San Francisco. Some $260 worth of Pathfinder books were sold, as well as nearly 200 Militants, 2 subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial, and a Militant subscription.

Socialist workers who are members of industrial unions are organizing for a final two-week push to meet their goal of to sell 500 copies of Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War to co- workers by May 1 and to sign up 400 members of the Pathfinder Readers Club.

"We sold four copies of Episodes in the last two days," Arlene Rubenstein reports from Atlanta. Two copies were sold as a result of collaboration between a team that sold the Militant and Pathfinder books outside a factory organized by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and workers who distribute the socialist literature inside the plant. One worker bought a copy of the Militant from a member of the sales team, who introduced him to socialist members of the union. After several weeks of discussion, he decided to get the book.

Another copy of Episodes was sold to a young man from Honduras who had come to pick up his mother from work. He bought a copy of Perspectiva Mundial, and then rushed back to buy Episodes. "I've been looking for people like you," he said.

Communist workers in New Zealand and Australia have joined the international effort to increase sales of the revolutionary books and pamphlets distributed by Pathfinder. They will be added to the charts in next week's Militant.

Over the past two months, members of the Communist League in New Zealand have doubled their sales. At an April 13-14 national leadership meeting in Auckland they set a goal of selling 95 books and pamphlets each month through the Pathfinder bookshops in Auckland and Christchurch, as well as increasing sales to other retail outlets. "Our biggest gains so far have been in the work of socialists who are members of industrial unions," said Joan Shields, a packinghouse worker in Christchurch. "Having literature tables at the plant gates and members of the unions showing books around to our co-workers has been the first collective political campaign on the job we've done in some time."

"We've sold 15 copies of Episodes out of our goal of 20," Joanne Kuniansky reports from Sydney, Australia. "We started a weekly plant gate sale in February at the F. Muller factory, which is organized by the Australian Manufacturers Workers Union.

A workmate who first bought a Militant from the team decided to get a copy of How Far We Slaves Have Come. That got her interested in learning more about Cuba so she bought a copy of Episodes.

Now she's a member of the Pathfinder Readers Club, is reading `The Opening Guns of World War IIÍ [in New International] and Malcolm X: The Final Speeches, and she came to see a slide show about a recent work brigade to Cuba."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home