The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.22           June 8, 1998 
 
 
Selling `Militant' At Beer Plants, To Cabbies  

BY LEA SHERMAN
HOUSTON - "Get your Militant and let's go into the plant," said a worker at Anheuser-Busch who had just bought a Militant. His co-worker was also getting out his money to buy the socialist newspaper as they hurried into the brewery for second shift.

More than 8,000 workers organized by the Teamsters in 12 plants nationwide rejected the company's May 1 final contract offer. They have been working under the old contract since it expired March 27.

Socialist workers here organized two sales at the brewery's plant gates and sold a total of 25 Militants. A shop steward who stopped to talk bought the paper both times saying he liked the coverage of workers acting to defend their standard of living and working conditions.

One worker who bought the Militant had earlier purchased a copy of Teamster Rebellion, the first of a four-volume series by Farrell Dobbs on the 1930s strikes and organizing drives that transformed the Teamsters union in Minnesota and much of the Midwest into a fighting industrial union movement.

Workers responded to the Militant's headline coverage of the increased resistance among workers around the country, particularly the struggles by the Northwest and TWA airline workers, who are working without a contract while carrying out job actions to demand a decent agreement. The bosses at those two airlines, like those at Anheuser-Busch, are all demanding concessions from the unionists.

*****

"Four teams of supporters of the 1998 New York Socialist Workers campaign sold 92 copies of the Militant to taxi drivers in three days leading up to their May 1 strike," wrote worker-correspondent Don Mackle. "The teams went to La Guardia and Kennedy airports, where hundreds of taxi drivers assemble to pick up passengers every day."

The strikers, organized by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, were protesting proposals by New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani that would make it easier to revoke their taxi licenses and other onerous measures.

The day before the strike, taxi drivers were walking among the assembled cabs encouraging others to join in the strike. In several cases groups of drivers approached the socialist campaign supporters and bought the Militant. Mackle remarked that the cab drivers, many of whom hail from countries around the world, were attracted to the Militant's coverage of working-class resistance internationally.

*****

Militant supporter Ardy Blandford from Birmingham writes, "We took a big orange sign to the coal fields in Alabama that read: `The Militant newspaper - read about workers' resistance around the world, 12 weeks for $10.' Our sales team, which included activists from Atlanta, sold 23 papers to miners at seven mine portals during the week of May 17-23."

Blandford said a Black miner at the Jim Walters mine no. 7 who took an interest in the Militant told them, "They're killing us in there - we're working six to seven days a week, 10 hours a day."

"We also campaigned for Socialist Workers candidate for governor of Alabama, Kristin Meriam, who was speaking at a forum that week about the fight for jobs and a clean environment," Blandford added.

Another sales team sold four copies of the socialist newsweekly to steelworkers at the B.F. Goodrich plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and one paper to a worker on the midnight shift at Northwest Airlines. Many workers bought the paper based on the Titan Tire workers' strike in Iowa, the coverage of the airline workers' fights at Northwest and TWA, and the general strike that paralyzed Denmark.

 
 
 
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