The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.46           December 23, 1996 
 
 
Socialists Sell More Than 2,000 Books In November  

BY MAURICE WILLIAMS

Sales of Pathfinder titles grew in November as socialist workers and youth sold more than 2,000 books and pamphlets to co-workers, students, and others involved in political activity around the world. Consistent sales work leads to more opportunities to reach out to fighters like the Wheeling-Pitt strikers, young activists defending death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, and others like the workers and farmers protesting in Greece. Communists can provide them with the political weapons needed to understand challenges facing the working class and recruit them to the socialist movement.

Ved Dookhun, a member of the Young Socialists in Peoria, reports, "One week before the regional socialist educational conference, we organized a sales team November 21 at the University of Illinois in Carbondale. We went there to meet Adam Turl, a part-time student who learned about the YS through the Internet. He staffed the literature table with us and later took us to see his friend who owns a bookstore. His friend bought 23 books, including the eight copies of the Marxist magazine New International."

Dookhun said Turl joined the team at a campus table in St. Louis the next day, asked to join the Young Socialists, and is now a member.

Activists in Miami topped the charts, selling 172 books in November, almost four times their monthly goal of 45. They sold 120 titles, including 16 copies of New International, at the Miami Bookfair November 22-24.

Supporters of Pathfinder in Washington, D.C., sold nearly 200 books in November, including a set of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and the Collected Works of Russian Revolution leader V.I. Lenin.

Socialist workers in London reported, "One worker at the Ford plant in Dagenham was inspired to buy Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58 by Ernesto Che Guevara after visiting Cuba for a vacation last summer. 'I'm really enjoying it,' the auto worker said. 'It's real. It's the truth.'

"Another worker from Nigeria was shocked by coverage in the Militant, which reported on South Africa's new laws legalizing abortion, but was interested in discussing why women should have the right to choose abortion. She bought the pamphlet Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle by Thomas Sankara, the leader of the Burkina Faso revolution."

In San Francisco, rail worker Joan Radin said socialist workers at Amtrak sold seven books to co-workers in November. "We sold two issues of New International including issue no. 4, which features the fight for a workers and farmers government. One co-worker, a Latino youth in his 20s, bought a copy of Marx and Engels on the United States." Radin said another co-worker who is a member of the Pathfinder Readers Club bought New International no. 6. "A big key for us is to get people to sign up for the readers club. Many of our sales are to co- workers who are members of the Pathfinder Readers Club."

"One of the highlights of this month's sales were the four books sold at an event commemorating the anniversary of Che Guevara's death at which the Cuban ambassador spoke," wrote Natasha Terlexis from Athens, Greece. Terlexis said socialist activists there sold another three books at an anti-war rally and solidarity meeting between Greek, Turkish, and Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot activists.

At a November 24 educational conference hosted by the Committee of Friends of the Militant newspaper, Terlexis added, "we sold one of the last copies of Evelyn Reed's Problems of Women's Liberation in Greek."  
 
 
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