Socialist workers and young socialists in the Midwest are planning sales teams to Worthington and Austin, Minnesota, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, an area with one of the largest meatpacking concentrations in the United States. Another sales team will visit Omaha, Nebraska, to talk to workers following the recent union election victory at ConAgra’s Northern State Beef plant.

Partisans of the circulation drive from several areas, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, the New York Garment District, and Newark, New Jersey, will attend the grand opening of the Pathfinder bookstore in Hazleton in the northeast Pennsylvania coal region. On the way to the event they will sell the Militant and PM to workers, farmers, and youth in the surrounding area.

Militant staff members Martín Koppel and Jack Willey, who will speak at Militant Fund events in Boston and Miami respectively, will team up with others to sell the socialist press in those cities over the weekend. Other staff members will also take the weekend to boost sales efforts elsewhere.

Steve Warshell said that socialist garment workers in Houston "are spearheading a team to the Rio Grande Valley where they plan to get back to workers they met at the two Levi’s plants in Brownsville and San Benito, Texas. The workers face plant closings in the near future. We also plan to go to neighborhoods in working-class districts in those two towns."

Campaigners also plan to set up a literature table on the campus of the University of Texas in Brownsville, he said, and another one at the Mexican-U.S. border. "This past week we sold three subscriptions to the Militant and a PM subscription at our weekly table in a working-class area of Houston. We also sold one subscription to each of the publications at nearby apartment buildings, where we met Rafael, who had worked in the California grape fields. He had been a member of the United Farm Workers union and asked us to come back for follow-up political discussions. ‘The union was strong when I worked in California, and I made decent money,’ he told us. ‘But we had to fight for every bit of it.’"

From Seattle John Naubert said that at the University of Washington campaign participants had sold Militant subscriptions to a young woman from Afghanistan and a student from Iran. "They decided to subscribe after we explained what the Militant and Pathfinder Press are about. By the end of the day we had sold more than $100 worth of Pathfinder titles," he said.

"As part of our activities for the target week," added Naubert, "we are organizing another day team at the University of Washington and a regional team to a large IBP meatpacking plant near Pasco in eastern Washington state that has a history of struggle."

"The target week is off to a good start in Des Moines," wrote Joe Swanson from the Iowa capital. "Last Saturday three of us hit the streets early and sold a Militant subscription at the farmers market downtown. Later we sold two subs door-to-door just a few blocks from the Pathfinder bookstore. We gained our last Militant subscription for the day off a table that we set up on the steps of the Iowa state capitol during the Rally for Justice and Peace in the Middle East."

Supporters in Toronto are driving ahead to make their goals, reported Patricia O’Beirne. "We’re doing weekly sales in the workers district where the Pathfinder bookstore is located, following up with students and people we’ve met at demonstrations in support of the Palestinian struggle, and selling the press to co-workers in meatpacking plants and garment factories."

Two students at York University decided to subscribe to the Militant after buying a copy of the paper, she said. "Two other people purchased Militant subscriptions at their apartment complex, which is near the Pathfinder bookstore. Another person who bought a subscription at our weekly table near the subway stop came back the next day to buy Cuba and the Coming American Revolution and Capitalism’s World Disorder by Jack Barnes."  
 
 
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