The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 76/No. 45      December 10, 2012

 
Readers step up door-to-door
effort to win new subscribers
(front page)
 
BY LOUIS MARTIN  
Readers of the Militant sold 274 subscriptions last week, our best since the beginning of the international campaign to win 3,500 subscribers to the socialist newsweekly by Dec. 16. This brings our total to 1,884.

With three weeks to go in the drive and 13 percent behind schedule, distributors of the paper are stepping up door-to-door sales in working-class neighborhoods in order to reach the goal in full and on time.

Militant readers in Seattle sold 15 subscriptions this past week, including 10 going door to door.

Brendan Jansen, an auto mechanic student and artist, was among those who signed up. “People need to be more active,” he said. “Everything is eroding around us like health care.”

Jansen also bought a copy of The Cuban Five: Who They Are, Why They Were Framed, Why They Should Be Free, one of four books offered at reduced prices with a subscription. (See ad below.)

Barber shop owner Stalin Harrison turned in money for two subscriptions he sold at his shop near the Militant Labor Forum hall in Seattle. Last month he took a small bundle of papers to show to customers.

“The Militant sells itself,” Harrison said. “It validates my customers’ own experiences.” They are always talking about politics, said Harrison, who also has been showing around Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, another one of the four books on special.

The Militant “is all over,” Carla Romain said as she showed the paper going door to door in Montreal a couple of Sundays ago. “An issue talked about workers in Greece, South Africa. It recently ran an article on the Grenadian Revolution.”

Romain, originally from Grenada, is a customer service worker and among 60 employees locked out by Maritime Hotel since the end of August.

Romain subscribed to the Militant a few weeks ago. After walking the daily picket line in downtown Montreal with Militant distributor Katy LeRougetel, the two went door to door in Romain’s former neighborhood, building solidarity with the hotel workers’ fight and selling the paper. Supporters of the paper returned to the area the following week.

One of the new subscribers from that neighborhood, originally from Afghanistan, later attended a Militant Labor Forum opposing Israel’s bombing of Gaza, where he bought a Farsi-language copy of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform Under Capitalism, one of the books on special.

Over the Nov. 17-18 weekend, three Militant readers from Houston and four from Edinburg, Texas, went door to door in working-class communities in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, selling 11 subscriptions and eight books.

Christy Mendoza, a student at University of Texas-Pan American and a member of the Revolutionary Student Alliance there, described how her team sold five subscriptions knocking on doors in Edinburg.

“We told people how our group wanted to learn more about workers in the community and share with them this paper with international news from a working-class point of view,” Mendoza said. “We met all kind of workers, inviting them to our events on the campus, like our film showing this week on the Cuban Revolution.”

Another team went door to door in Donna, Texas, a small town in the rich farmland of the valley, a few miles from the U.S. border with Mexico, selling three subscriptions.

One of the new subscribers was Ponciano Martinez. As a student in Texas in the 1970s, he was involved in the struggles for Chicano rights. “Because I knew the area, I would work at finding witnesses to testify in defense of the farmworkers,” he said.

This week the “Prisoners” entry on the chart increased by two, its goal by three, and was moved out of the U.S. section after Mike Tucker wrote from Auckland, New Zealand, that Militant distributors there had received two subscriptions from prisoners.

One is a renewal from an inmate in Auckland who circulates the paper among a dozen others. The second is from a first-time reader in another prison who got a copy of The Cuban Five book from a fellow prisoner and decided to subscribe. (See the Prisoners’ Fund box on page 9.)

Make the campaign a success. Order a bundle and subscription blanks at themilitant@mac.com or (212) 244-4899.
 
 
Related articles:
Fall ‘Militant’ subscription campaign Oct. 13 – Dec. 16 (week 6) (chart)  
 
 
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