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Vol. 75/No. 15      April 18, 2011

 
Readership of ‘Militant’ grows
amid fights by working people
(front page)
 
BY DOUG NELSON  
The Militant’s readership continues to grow as the working-class paper is sold at labor actions and political events across the United States and elsewhere. More than 700 workers, farmers, and young people have subscribed to the paper since early February, when a fight against the U.S. rulers’ antiunion offensive opened in Wisconsin.

The subscription base has risen each week for the last two months, reflecting a hunger for solidarity among working people looking for ways to effectively fight back. This bodes well for the Militant’s international subscription campaign, which opens April 23.

Twenty-four subscriptions were sold this week by a team of socialist workers in Cairo, Egypt (see article on page 3).

In addition, supporters of the Militant sold 72 subscriptions and more than 530 copies of the paper as they participated in a couple dozen union protests and other actions in cities across the country on and around April 4, the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination.

“I couldn’t sit at home and be silent any longer,” said Shawn Keenan, a young restaurant worker who bought a subscription at a labor solidarity action of 400 in Seattle.

Thirty-one participants at a rally of some 100 people in Kankakee, Illinois, left with a copy of the Militant. Scott MacDonald, a retired Teamsters’ member, subscribed and picked up a copy of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack Barnes. “I was visiting Metropolis, Illinois, recently and talked to workers on strike at Honeywell. I could see they had a lot of support in the town,” he said.

“I am here to support workers in Wisconsin who are fighting for collective bargaining rights,” said Darrell Lane, a processor technician at Kraft Foods who bought the paper at a demonstration in Atlanta. “If they lose, it passes down. We have to stop the attacks to safeguard the future for workers’ unions and workers’ rights.”

Lane is vice president of Local 42 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM). He and two of his coworkers, who also bought the Militant, were particularly interested in the paper’s coverage of the fight by BCTGM workers locked out by Roquette America in Keokuk, Iowa, and the solidarity their struggle has received.

Four books are being offered at special discounts with Militant subscriptions that can help readers better understand the fight by workers here and around the world to advance our class interests amid today’s deep world capitalist crisis and expanding imperialist wars (see ad on front page). These include three books by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party—Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power; The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions; and The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning—as well as Is Socialist Revolution in the U.S. Possible? by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters.

At the April 4 actions, 23 books were sold as part of the special offer.
 
 
Related articles:
‘Militant’ contributions arrive as paper responds to struggles  
 
 
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