Vol. 73/No. 44 November 16, 2009
Supporters of the Militant will want to continue to get out to Ford auto plants where union members this week voted down a concession contract by a wide margin. Workers at other auto plants and workplaces will also be interested in the Militant’s reports on the vote.
Through the seventh week of the drive, local distributors are winning steady numbers of subscribers to the socialist press. What marked this week’s sales was interest in the paper by those first learning about the Socialist Workers Party’s election campaigns.
Doug Nelson in New York reports that seven people subscribed in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a largely Black and working-class area of Brooklyn, Sunday afternoon November 1 after hearing Socialist Workers mayoral candidate Dan Fein soapboxing with a bullhorn. “One man who had been listening to Fein while in a nearby restaurant came out and said he liked everything he had heard. He got a subscription and made a $15 contribution,” Nelson said.
The previous day, Fein spoke to a political science class at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. One of the students got a subscription to the paper and four others bought single issues.
Four additional subscriptions were sold in northern Manhattan as residents met Tom Baumann, SWP candidate for borough president there. A student at Pace University in downtown Manhattan got a subscription after hearing Maura Deluca, SWP candidate for public advocate, speak on campus at a debate against her opponents.
The Socialist Workers campaign in Des Moines, Iowa, has also been getting a good response to the paper. Rebecca Williamson, SWP candidate for Des Moines City Council Ward 1, and David Rosenfeld, the party’s candidate for city council at-large, participated in three local debates and campaigned in areas where meatpacking workers live. Five people bought subscriptions from campaign supporters going door-to-door in Perry, Iowa, where a large Tyson plant is located. Three meat packers got subscriptions at the JBS Swift plant.
Selling subscriptions in industrial workplaces continues to be a highlight of the drive. In Los Angeles, a meat packer in the Farmer John plant subscribed, as did a garment worker in American Apparel, bringing the total number of subscribers in both plants to five and 11 respectively.
A large number of new subscribers are students who local distributors are meeting as they regularly sell the Militant on campus. Joe Young from Montreal reports that two students at Concordia University subscribed this week. Four people decided to get subscriptions from teams campaigning this week at campuses that are part of the City University of New York system: three at Hunter College and one at the City College of New York.
'Militant' subscription drive: Week 7 (chart)