BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
"As we kick off the campaign to win new readers to the
socialist press, we will be sending a team of activists to
Hartford, Connecticut, this weekend to meet members of the
Communications Workers of America on strike against Southern
New England Telecommunications," said Greg McCartan from
Boston. "The team will also sell door to door in working-class
areas and try to get in contact with Puerto Rican activists
there."
McCartan, a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, will join with other socialist workers in industrial unions, members of the Young Socialists, and other supporters to launch the international drive to sell 1,300 new subscriptions to the Militant and 400 subscriptions to its Spanish-language sister magazine, Perspectiva Mundial.
The eight-week campaign, which starts September 12 and ends November 8, will also have goals for selling copies of the Marxist magazine New International. Goals adopted by supporters of the socialist press so far total about 600 copies, but don't include projections for selling issue no. 11, which will be available by October 1. Next week's Militant will list goals from supporters in cities and in trade unions around the world, as well as report on the initial results of the campaign.
Many supporters participated in several events over the Labor Day weekend to campaign for the Socialist Workers candidates and warm up for the sales drive.
"We sold six subscriptions this week getting ready for the subscription campaign," said Melissa Harris from Newark, New Jersey. "We sold three Militant subs and a subscription to Perspectiva Mundial to unionists at the Labor Day parade in Paterson, New Jersey, while campaigning with Susan Anmuth, Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Congress. The sales in general were very easy because many people were interested in the strike by the pilots at Northwest Airlines and other labor battles. I also talked about the struggle for Black rights and the fight by Black farmers and that helped a lot."
At the September 5 Million Youth March rally in Harlem, supporters sold 91 copies of the Militant and $400 worth of Pathfinder books and pamphlets, reported rail worker Al Duncan from New York. Duncan, the Socialist Workers candidate for governor of New York, and Rose Ana Berbeo, the candidate for U.S. Senate, staffed a campaign table while talking to hundreds of participants at the event. "The most popular titles were on the Cuban revolution and then Malcolm X," Duncan added.
"Almost every striker I talked to brought up forced overtime as a major issue," Cornish said. "I explained how this reflects the deepening crisis of the capitalist system and how the bosses try to push us to take up the slack. Strikers seriously read the Labor Day statement put out by the campaign and we will be going back to see what they thought and follow the progress of the strike."
Supporters of the socialist press also sold seven more copies of the Militant at a Labor Day event, to Northwest pilots, and flight attendants. Several people expressed agreement with an article in the Militant on their strike that pointed to the danger of the government playing a strike- breaking role.
At the Million Youth Movement events in Atlanta, socialist workers set up a 12-foot-long table with assistance from socialist campaigners from Birmingham, Chicago, and Miami and sold 58 copies of the Militant and 17 Pathfinder titles.
"A lot of young people bought the paper to find out the truth about the U.S. bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan. Many of them were suspicious about Washington's goals, but they had no way of getting the facts. We distributed 400 `Join the Young Socialists' leaflets, and some participants were specifically interested in checking out a youth organization with a revolutionary program," reported James Harris, the party's candidate for governor of Georgia.
Twenty-five people signed up for more information on the YS.
We sold six copies of the Militant at the September 5 Labor Day parade in Cleveland. We also got out copies of a new campaign flier for the Socialist Workers candidate for Congress in the 10th District, Tony Prince, who is a member of the United Steelworkers of America at LTV.
Several people who bought the paper were familiar with it, either from getting it on the job in the past, or seeing it through other political work. We ran into one student from Cleveland State University who had come by a literature table earlier this summer. He got a copy at the parade and gave us his name to get back in touch with him.
Prince marched in the contingent of the Alejandro Ramírez Defense Coalition, which got a good response from people along the route. The coalition is working for justice for Ramírez, a Mexican agricultural worker framed and imprisoned on a murder charge in Paynesville, Ohio. Activists passed out fliers for a September 16 rally for Ramírez taking place in Cleveland. The contingent marched behind a banner done in the colors of the Mexican flag that said "Justice for Alejandro Ramírez!" Several unionists in the parade and people along the route said they had heard of the case and were glad to get some information on it.
There were about 2,500 people in the parade, including members of the Teamsters union who are fighting the closing of a "Mr. Coffee" plant by the Sunbeam corporation; utility workers for an electric company in Cleveland, which imposed a take-back contract on the workers that resulted in layoffs; and Cleveland public school teachers who are concerned about the takeover of the school system by Cleveland mayor Michael White. Several march participants told me they thought the demonstration was larger this year than in the past.
Three supporters from Cleveland also went to the Detroit parade on September 7. I ran into two Detroit newspaper strikers who I had met in March at a rally for striking steelworkers at MSI in Marietta, Ohio. They wanted to know how the strike is going, and were glad to hear the MSI workers are going to hold another rally October 10 in Marietta. By the end of the day we sold 58 copies of the Militant, one copy of New International no. 7, and five Pathfinder titles.