BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Militant supporters started the subscription campaign with a bang over the Labor Day weekend.

"We campaigned for Rosa Garmendia, Socialist Workers candidate for mayor of Detroit, where we sold three subscriptions and 62 single issues of the Militant at the Labor Day Parade here," wrote Holly Harkness. Unionists at the rally bought seven Pathfinder titles, including two books from the four-volume Teamster series by Farrell Dobbs. Harkness said participants attending two classes on the Cuban revolution and the other one on the lessons of the UPS strike bought ten books. The titles they purchased included two copies of Pombo: a Man of Che's `Guerrilla,' one copy of the pamphlet At the Side of Che Guevara, and a copy of El rostro cambiante de la política Estados Unidos, the Spanish- language edition of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions.

Activists from Birmingham and Atlanta organized a regional sales team in the southeast, where they participated in a Labor Day rally in Copperhill, Tennessee, and sold five Militant subscriptions and 18 single issues of the paper.

Socialists in the New York-New Jersey area joined in the August 29 march in Brooklyn against the cop torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima and set up Socialist Workers campaign tables. Protesters there bought five subscriptions and 147 single issues of the Militant; one subscription to Perspectiva Mundial; and 188 Pathfinder titles, including 24 copies of the Marxist magazine New International in both English and French, six copies of Pombo: a Man of Che's `Guerrilla,' and two copies of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics.

Jane Harris from Newark said she sold a Militant subscription to a woman at the demonstration, and then sold two more to fellow rail workers in Hoboken, New Jersey. Both co-workers were interested in the Louima case and the Militant's analysis of the recent UPS strike. Two other rail workers bought single copies of the socialist newsweekly to see if they might be interested in subscribing.

Socialist workers from Newark and Boston joined those in New York for the annual Caribbean Day parade in Brooklyn, where they sold 13 Militant subscriptions, 97 single copies, and 88 Pathfinder books and pamphlets.

Socialist activists came up short on the international goals of the renewal drive and the campaign to sell the new Pathfinder titles as the chart shows. "But it was really good to get in gear for the sub drive by having these two campaigns," said Kathy Logan in Toronto. "We did go over several other goals as a result of the efforts we were making to wrap up a successful campaign. Three days into the first week, we have two New Internationals and three Militant subscriptions - two of which were sold at the labor day parade in Toronto - which is a good start." BY SARA LOBMAN

Pathfinder supporters in Chicago are taking advantage of several new titles and new promotional material to increase efforts to get local bookstores to carry the publisher's books. "We also wanted to draw attention to the Teamsters series, in light of the strike by workers at UPS," Maggie Perrier said in a note to Pathfinder's main office in New York. Perrier reports that supporters targeted two Saturdays in August, visiting 7 stores.

One store placed an order for 66 books and pamphlets, including 2 copies of Pombo: A Man of Che's `Guerrillá by Harry Villegas, Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs, and 20 copies of Malcolm X Talks to Young People for use in a class. "When we got to the meeting, they had already put up the poster of the Villegas book," Perrier said.

"Please note that our current order includes Land or Death: The Peasant Struggle in Peru by Hugo Blanco," Cindy Jaquith, from the Pathfinder Bookstore in Birmingham, writes. "A number of young people have come in recently requesting literature on the class struggle in Peru. We have sold several copies of Peru's `Shining Path:' Evolution of a Stalinist Sect by Martín Koppel and one person bough a copy of The Leninist Strategy of Party Building: the Debate on Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America. Often after discussion, these customers also pick up a title or two by leaders of the Cuban revolution.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home