Running through to June 15, the international appeal aims to raise $50,000 toward the annual costs of producing and distributing the English-language weekly and Spanish-language monthly.

"A worker in meatpacking who has been reading the Militant for several months was there," wrote Hillenbrand. "This was the first meeting like this he had attended. Two young women who just graduated from high school also showed up. They had found out about the event from an announcement in the local newspaper, and wanted to learn more about socialism."

A number of longtime supporters of the Militant in the area attended, Hillenbrand reported. "A retired steelworker who has read the Militant off and on over the last year decided to come," he added. "He bought a subscription to the paper. Two other participants purchased copies of Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by Jack Barnes"--a book that is at the center of the current drive to increase the circulation of the socialist press.

Jack Willey, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party and a staff writer for the Militant, was the speaker at the Tampa event. His presentation was entitled, "From Haiti to the U.S. and Canada: Prospects for Building an International Socialist Movement of Working People and Youth." In mid-May Willey had traveled to Haiti as part of an SWP and Young Socialists delegation to a meeting of university students and young socialists in Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital.

Willey and several other members of the Haiti delegation--Arrin Hawkins and Nancy Séguin, leaders of the YS in the United States and Canada respectively, and SWP member Rollande Girard--have spoken or are planning to speak on a similar theme at Militant/PM fund events in a number of cities.

Hawkins’ June 1 presentation in Newark, New Jersey, was well received and prompted a number of questions. Supporters pledged or contributed some $1,300 toward the local goal of $2,000.

Cleveland supporters of the Militant and PM invited SWP leader Frank Forrestal to speak at their fund meeting on June 1. "The afternoon of the meeting," wrote Carole Lesnick, "Forrestal and three other Militant supporters joined the picket line of Teamsters union members at the Cargill Whiskey Island Salt Mine. The striking miners expressed their appreciation of the Militant’s coverage of their struggle to establish a five-day workweek, Monday through Friday."

Fund drive campaigners in Des Moines, Iowa, invited a socialist involved in the union organizing drive of packinghouse workers in Omaha, Nebraska, to speak at their June 2 meeting. "He focused his talk on the growing resistance by workers and farmers to imperialism’s assaults at home and abroad," reported Joe Swanson.

"A woman meat packer who has helped to lead the pro-union drive in Omaha came to the meeting," Swanson added. "This was the first such forum she had attended. Afterwards, she purchased two books of writings by Lenin and Marx and the June issue of Perspectiva Mundial.

"We raised $425 toward our goal in Des Moines of $1,000," wrote Swanson, noting that the "delicious meal" put on by volunteers hadn’t done any harm to the results of the meeting.

Houston supporters are building and preparing a fund event for June 15, reported Jacquie Fitzgerald. Entitled "Cuba and the Coming American Revolution," the meeting will feature Young Socialists leader Olympia Newton from Los Angeles.

Political meetings like these, now under preparation in many cities, will help supporters step up the pace of soliciting and collecting funds. Such an acceleration is needed to make the goal in the two weeks remaining.

The experience and approach of supporters in New Zealand are instructive. "We have raised the goals here by 50 percent," wrote Mike Tucker from Auckland. "This is the result of pledges and donations from Militant supporters going well over the original targets that we projected. The challenge now is to do the follow-up work to get all this money in over the remaining two weeks."  
 
 
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