"Placed four titles in a Latino community store…" — Tom Fiske, airport worker and member of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) in the Twin Cities, Minnesota.

"I and another Pathfinder supporter visited Indiana, Pennsylvania, and placed Capitalism's World Disorder and seven other Pathfinder titles at a campus bookstore..." — Danny Booher, member of the United Steelworkers of America, in Pittsburgh.

These are some of the reports the Militant has received from union members participating in the campaign to place Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium in stores and libraries where workers, farmers, and young people browse, read, and buy. "Pathfinder supporters in the IAM have placed a total of 25 books since the beginning of the campaign," stated a report by Arlene Rubinstein, an airport worker in Atlanta. The campaign runs through to the end of the year.

Rubinstein explained that these workers "use the book to respond to political discussions on the job. Questions about Patrick Buchanan, the Reform Party, and Jesse Ventura (Northwest Airlines features Ventura on the cover of their in-flight magazine) give us opportunities to discuss politics and move the book both on the job and through placements."

Buchanan, who is putting together an incipient fascist cadre, is preparing his followers, or "brigades" as he calls them, to break from the Republican Party in a bid for the presidential candidacy of the Reform Party. This move is opposed by Minnesota governor Ventura, a Bonapartist politician who strives to dominate the Reform Party himself. "Capitalism's World Disorder contains the clearest explanation a working person can find about such figures," reports Rubinstein. "And it explains how workers and farmers have the potential power to defeat them and the capitalist system that breeds them."

The Militant has received several reports from teams that have traveled outside their home cities to promote the book. Such teams are finding that it's best not to organize a crowded and exhausting itinerary, but instead to allow time for political discussions with the workers, farmers, and young people they meet. Those discussions can also lead to useful collaboration on visits to possible outlets for Pathfinder books.

"Buyers in two bookstores in Inverness and Dundee took a Pathfinder catalogue each, one took a copy of Capitalism's World Disorder and one said he would order it," reported Harry Robinson and Frances Rogan from Manchester, England, on their return from a trip to eastern Scotland. "Our team also visited three oil rig construction yards, Barmac in Nigg and Ardersier in the northeast and Kvaerner in Nethil in Fife," they continued. "At Nigg we sold 78 Militants to two shifts of workers, and a copy of the Pathfinder pamphlet Che Guevara and the Imperialist Reality.

"Our team went to a livestock market at Inverurie to talk with working farmers and find out their views on the crisis in farming and proposed changes to land ownership laws in Scotland. Farmers bought two copies of the Militant and three copies of the pamphlet Farmers Face the Crisis of the 1990s."

Angel Lariscy writes from Miami that "volunteers have made sales and promotion trips to the central and western regions of Florida. A couple of visits to a library in a town in sugarcane country, northwest of Miami, netted an order for 13 books, including English- and Spanish-language titles by Malcolm X, and The Communist Manifesto in Spanish.

"Karl Butts, a vegetable farmer in Plant City, has taken on the task of placing Pathfinder books" at a library and community college near him, reports Lariscy. "He told us, 'If I had found Pathfinder books in the library at my college or in the bookstores I visited 10, 15, 20 years ago I would be a different person today. This is what motivates me to help get Pathfinder books into places where people can find them.'"

Lariscy also reports, "Michael Martinez, a senior at North Miami Beach High School, said he found his first Pathfinder book, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, in a chain bookstore in Miami almost two years ago. He found the advertisements for other Pathfinder titles in the back. He called Pathfinder Press in New York, and they told him there is a Pathfinder bookstore in Miami.

"Martinez, who is 17, delved into the pamphlet by Rafael Cancel Miranda, Puerto Rico: Independence is a Necessity, in his presentation on the Puerto Rican struggle at the Militant Labor Forum on October 2 in Miami. 'Maybe only in these books can you find true history,' he said in his talk, "Surely not in any school books.'"

Pathfinder supporters in Atlanta, Houston, and Miami went to North Carolina in early October. "The highlight of our trip was talking to workers at the plant gate of Continental General Tire," reports Kay Sedam. "Steelworkers there had just registered a victory after a yearlong strike in which fewer than 20 of 1,450 workers crossed the picket line, and the company hired 800 replacements. Of the hundreds going in and out of the gate, about half were former strikers, and half former strikebreakers.

"We handed out leaflets with a report from the Militant on the contract settlement and an advertisement for Capitalism's World Disorder at the special price of $20, which holds until the end of the year. Before our trip we contacted many strikers whom previous teams met. One said he'd be finishing his shift at 7 p.m., and that he wanted 'the book.' Sure enough, when he came out he had his $20 ready, along with a $5 donation for the Militant.

"One worker told us that 'things are tense in here,'" Sedam continued, referring to the coexistence of strikers and strikebreakers in the plant. "'This is my first day back but things were fine inside,' said another. Many former strikebreakers, supported the union's victory. In all we sold 21 copies of the paper.

"Workers and other Pathfinder supporters in the area had recommended several bookstores for visits," said Sedam, "and we took the time to stop by them. One shop took two copies of Capitalism's World Disorder on the spot, and ordered eight other titles. These included the latest issue of New International, The Truth About Yugoslavia, and two Malcolm X titles."  
 
 
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