The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.37           October 19, 1998 
 
 
`Militant' Launches Target Week To Get On Track For Sub Drive  

BY ELVIDIO MEJÍA AND MARGARET TROWE
Supporters of the communist press are launching a special target week October 10-17 to wipe out the current 8 percent gap in the international subscription campaign. In cities around the world they are taking special measures to expand sales to new areas and step up subbing on the job, at campuses, and in working-class communities. Among other things they are fielding regional teams to sell new subscriptions of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, together with copies of New International magazine, to miners, meatpackers, farmers, and others. Below are a few reports sent in from the campaign front.

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa - The Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Senate in Iowa, Margaret Trowe, and two supporters, all members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union at the Swift plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, went campaigning door-to- door near the plant October 4.

We picked a street at random and found that at four out of five houses we ran into co-workers, all of whom were quite interested in the program the Socialist Workers are putting forward. We were invited into several houses for extensive discussion and were offered refreshments. Later we visited two families of co-workers we already know, and had fruitful house meetings there as well.

We talked about the recent arrests of Mexican-born workers by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) on Interstate 80 and how we can defend immigrant rights, the attempt to drag working people down into the capitalists' politics of resentment through the pornographic character of the scandal involving President William Clinton, the U.S. war threats against Yugoslavia; and the many struggles on the job at Swift to fight line speedup and victimization of union militants.

One co-worker was part of a protest meeting against changes in a boning operation on the ham line that made several workers' jobs much more difficult. Workers described how line speedup has led to arm and shoulder injuries.

In several households, two or more adults work at Swift. Others we met work at a nearby IBP beef plant in Tama, Iowa, where workers who held sit-down strikes last year for higher wages were subjected to an INS raid when their boss called in the deportation cops.

We got a lot of support for the Socialist Workers proposals for a jobs program calling for a shorter workweek with no cut in pay, cancellation of the Third World debt, and affirmative action measures for Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and women. We raised the idea of a campaign meeting in Marshalltown October 18, and many workers showed interest in attending and helping publicize the meeting, as well as helping us find an inexpensive meeting hall.

We handed out a number of campaign flyers in English and Spanish, and co-workers at two households bought introductory subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial. One renewed his subscription and bought An Action Program to Confront the Coming Economic Crisis in Spanish. Another bought a copy of the Militant and wants to consider subscribing next week.

*****
BY DAN FEIN

ATLANTA - Two supporters of the Militant made a trip to northern Georgia October 5 to get the socialist press in the hands of some of the 1,000 members of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees at the textile mill in Lindsdale, a mill town. Six workers bought copies of the Militant at the 3:00 p.m. shift change.

After that sale, the team headed to Copperhill, Tennessee, where workers have been on strike for more than two years at an acid plant. Jewell Cole, one of the three pickets on the line when the team arrived, told us about the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies ignoring the asbestos contamination and other chemical pollution. He decided to subscribe to the Militant after hearing that the socialist press calls for a workers and farmers government to replace the capitalist government in Washington, D.C.

*****

BY JANICE LYNN

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Hundreds of people stopped by the Pathfinder Bookstore booth at the Baltimore Book Festival September 26-27. Participants bought some $400 worth of pamphlets, books, and catalogs. Over the course of the weekend we sold five subscriptions -three to the Militant and two to the Spanish-language monthly Perspectiva Mundial.

In addition, we sold 36 copies of the Militant and four copies of Perspectiva Mundial. Among the 42 books and pamphlets we sold, four were copies of the New International magazines.

Other top sellers included the two new Pathfinder books -John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s and Black Music, White Business; as well as the pamphlets Genocide Against the Indians, Socialism and Man in Cuba, Puerto Rico: Independence is a Necessity, and The Communist Manifesto.

About a dozen young people signed up for more information about the Young Socialists and many stayed around the booth to have further political discussions about the ideas contained in the books displayed.

 
 
 
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