Now is the best time to step up the pace of the circulation campaign and get hundreds more fighters reading the socialist publications each week. A serious, well-planned effort is needed to get the subscription drive on schedule. Last week supporters of the campaign to win new readers to the socialist press sold 89 subscriptions to the Militant, 25 PM subs and 32 copies of New International. Supporters need to sell 169 Militant subscriptions, 43 PM subscriptions, and 79 NIs each week for the remaining five weeks to make the international goals.

The April 29-May 7 target week is an opportunity for supporters around the world to wage a full-court press to get back on target. Supporters in the unions need to discuss plans for selling the paper to co-workers, and making that one of the central components of the subscription drive. The sales chart will be posted on the Militant's web site on Tuesdays so participants and readers can follow the progress of the campaign.

Many youth involved in political activities, like those who attended the OCLAE conference in Havana will be eager to read the Militant's coverage of the Cuban revolution and the increased working-class resistance unfolding all over the world. One student at a rally of 6,000 people in Edmonton, Alberta, to defend health care bought five Pathfinder pamphlets on the Cuban revolution, women's rights, and the fight for independence of Quebec, wrote Rosemary Ray. "He was disappointed when we told him there was no Pathfinder Bookstore in Edmonton and said, 'Why don't you open a bookstore here? We need revolutionary books in this city.'"

Ray was on a sales and reporting team of Militant supporters traveling across Canada to build the upcoming convention of the Communist League of Canada, while reaching out to workers and farmers involved in protest actions. "We visited two cattle farmers in Colonsay who met supporters of the Militant at protests by farmers in Saskatchewan several months ago," she said. "They welcomed us into their home. One bought a copy of New International no. 4 because she wanted to read Fidel Castro's speeches on land reform and farm cooperatives in Cuba."

From Washington, D.C., Janice Lynn wrote, "We talked to scores of young people who came to this city April 8-17 to protest the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank." We pointed out that the main enemy was the rulers in Washington, rather than institutions like the IMF or World Bank and that it is the lawful workings of capitalism in crisis that is responsible for the evils young people are repelled by--poverty, low wages and working conditions, degradation of the environment, and other social injustices."

Lynn said participants in the IMF protests purchased 16 subscriptions to the Militant or Perspectiva Mundial, 100 copies of the socialist newsweekly, and $700 worth of Pathfinder literature.

The circulation drive in Los Angeles was given a jump-start by "the janitors' strike here with rallies of thousands and daily pickets," wrote Mark Friedman. "We have sold six subs to strikers and their supporters at rallies, and a couple of New Internationals."

Friedman said they aim to maintain sales of the Militant and PM at factory plant gates as "another component of our efforts." Bringing co-workers to the picket lines and striking janitors to union meetings are also part of the subscription campaign, he added. "The Militant Labor Forums are larger and more literature and subscriptions are being sold there, too."  
 
 
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