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A socialist newsweekly published in the interests of working people
Vol. 64/No. 34September 11, 2000

 
'Militant' to launch drive for new readers
 
BY MAURICE WILLIAMS  
Socialist workers and Young Socialists are planning to kick off an international subscription drive September 9 to win new readers to the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial. The circulation effort will coincide with two months of intensive campaigning for the Socialist Workers presidential ticket of James Harris and Margaret Trowe, along with dozens of other candidates for federal and state office. The nine-week drive will end November 12.

The circulation campaign will also include selling copies of the Marxist magazine New International, an invaluable tool for working-class fighters and fight-minded youth who want to broaden their knowledge of the labor movement and delve more deeply into theoretical questions addressed in the Militant and PM.

The new pamphlet, The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform under Capitalism, will be a key part of the campaign. Pathfinder Press has decided to make this pamphlet available for $1--$2 off the cover price--to anyone who purchases a subscription to the Militant or PM. The pamphlet gets to the heart of political questions facing working people, including the bosses' need for cops and executions to maintain capitalist social relations and the bourgeois state.

A growing number of workers and farmers resisting the attacks by the employers and the government today are finding the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial a necessary part of their struggles. This is true both for the news and information on strikes and protests happening around the country, and for articles that take up broader political questions and issues, both in the United States and around the world.

Partisans of the papers will be using the nine-week campaign to take extra time and make special plans to introduce the socialist publications to co-workers on the job, vanguard fighters in the labor movement, activists against police brutality and capital punishment, farmers fighting to defend their land, protesters against the U.S. Navy bombing of Vieques, defenders of immigrant rights, and others. The campaign will also involve going door to door in working-class communities, farm areas, and mining regions.

The Militant's coverage of the struggles by meat packers, as well as coal miners and other working people in mining areas, has helped boost the number of workers in these industries who are readers of the paper. One miner who works in the western coalfields helped a Militant supporter distribute the paper to striking miners--who bought five subscriptions--in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Efforts like these have expanded the subscription base among workers in the coalfields where a rising social movement is developing over life and death questions of safety and health care.

The sub drive will increase the Militant's circulation on college campuses where the death penalty and cop brutality are among the biggest political topics of discussion. Many students will want to read the socialist newsweekly, which gives a working-class view on these political issues.

Sales of Perspectiva Mundial will build on the success of the previous drive, when the campaign went substantially over the goal. It registered results in reaching out to immigrant workers, many of them from Central and South America who bring class-struggle experiences to the United States. These workers are gaining more confidence to fight and are a central part of leading struggles in packing plants, garment factories, and other industries across the country.

The sales campaign is linked to reaching out to vanguard layers of workers and farmers who will become a class struggle leadership in the working-class movement. The Militant, PM, and Pathfinder titles are natural tools for helping to advance the battalions of working people who will lead the transformation of the unions and open the fight to transform society.

Maurice Williams is the director of the subscription drive.

 
 
 
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