BY NAOMI CRAINE
"We have a big first day planned for the subscription drive," reported Gale Shangold from Los Angeles. Supporters of the Militant plan to kick off the sales drive there September 23 at a teach-in on affirmative action at a United Auto Workers hall in Long Beach, an immigrant rights event, and a report-back meeting by young people who recently traveled to Cuba, as well as with sales teams to working- class areas. "We're meeting tomorrow night to discuss the rest of our plans" for selling 120 Militant subscriptions, 75 Perspectiva Mundial subscriptions, and 75 copies of New International over the following eight weeks.
Supporters of the socialist press around the world are gearing up for a drive to sell introductory subscriptions to the Militant and the Spanish-language monthly Perspectiva Mundial, and copies of the Marxist magazine New International. The first eight days of the effort, September 23 to October 1, will be a target week to start the sales drive off with a bang. The campaign will run eight weeks through November 19.
In Miami, teams will spend a full day going door to door in the Homestead community on the first weekend of the target week. The next weekend they will field a two-day team to Gainsville, eight hours north, to participate in a report- back meeting from the Cuba Lives youth festival and organize door to door sales.
Militant supporters in Houston are planning a similar two-day trip to the Rio Grande Valley during the target week to sell to farmworkers there and to students at nearby Pan American University.
Craig Honts, a rail worker in Los Angeles, said a team of socialist rail workers will travel to Mexico City at the end of the target week, from September 29 to October 2, to meet Mexican rail workers, learn about their struggles, and sell Perspectiva Mundial subscriptions. They will also participate in actions marking the anniversary of the 1968 massacre of Mexican student protesters October 2.
In Greensboro, North Carolina, Marty Boyers reports Militant supporters are "putting a bigger emphasis on selling at stores and door to door in working-class neighborhoods than we have in recent years." Their ambitious plan for selling 60 Militant subs, 10 Perspectiva Mundial subs, and 15 New Internationals will help them reach out to textile workers in the region. "We're going to Kannapolis, where workers recently won a National Labor Relations Board ruling against Fieldcrest Cannon," Boyers said. The NLRB ordered a new vote on union representation at Fieldcrest's giant complex of nonunion textile mills there, stating that the company had engaged in "numerous, pervasive, and outrageous" unfair labor practices during a 1991 organizing drive. The company was also ordered to reinstate 13 fired workers.
Special sales teams in Detroit
"This is my first experience as part of a strike
action," said Carol James, referring to the newspaper
workers' strike in Detroit. James is a member of the United
Transportation Union in Cleveland who participated in the
mass picketing with other unionists to stop the Sunday paper
from being delivered. After that experience, "I wanted to
come back out," she said in a phone interview from Detroit
September 13.
James returned to join Militant supporters in Detroit in selling the socialist press on the picket line, at other factories' gates, in working-class neighborhoods, and on campuses.
Militant supporters from Minnesota and elsewhere are also planning to join the sales team. James reported that seven people bought the Militant at Wayne State University that morning. She was preparing to go on a plant-gate sale at a Ford plant later in the day. "We're also going to go to Sterling Heights and talk to workers in that community" where the main printing plant is, she said.
"People are interested in the coverage on the strike," James noted, "and also in the reports on Cuba and the cases of Mark Curtis and Mumia Abu-Jamal." She also reported many discussions on the Detroit strike are taking place among workers in Cleveland. "People are glad to get information on it in the Militant from the workers' side of the line." Readers who would like to join in the sales effort in Detroit can call distributors there at (313) 875-0100.
Hot off the e-mail is a message from our correspondents at the UN Conference on Women in Beijing, listing the tally of sales of the Militant and other socialist literature at the forum for nongovernmental organizations, which just concluded there. Fifteen participants in the event bought subscriptions to the Militant, and three subscribed to Perspectiva Mundial. In addition, 71 bought single copies of the Militant and 11 picked up a copy of Perspectiva Mundial. Participants bought 13 copies of New International in English, Spanish, and French, as well as 63 other books and pamphlets published by Pathfinder Press.
Material on the Cuban revolution was well received; the best-seller was the pamphlet Che Guevara and the Fight for Socialism Today by Mary-Alice Waters, with eight copies sold. Four people picked up New International no. 8, on the theme "Che Guevara and the Road to Socialism." The issues of New International containing the articles "Imperialism's March toward Fascism and War" and "Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's assault on Iraq" were popular, as was the Communist Manifesto. Six participants bought the pamphlet Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle by Thomas Sankara, the leader of the 1983-87 revolution in Burkina Faso, and four purchased Why is Mark Curtis Still in Prison?
Janet Roth reports from Auckland, New Zealand, that sales of the Militant there have been combined with campaigning for Communist League candidates in the municipal elections. A recent Saturday morning began with a visit by campaign supporters to a picket by strikers at Carter Holt Harvey's roofing division. The workers there are demanding a bigger raise than what the company is offering, as well as opposing attempts to bring in casual workers. The campaigners also set up a table at a nearby shopping center, where a number of people stopped to buy the Militant and discuss the campaign with the socialist candidate for mayor of Auckland, James Robb.
The sales drive and socialist campaigning are also linked in Salt Lake City, where Socialist Workers mayoral candidate Nelson Gonzalez just spoke at East High School sponsored by the Socialist Club. Several students plan to help campaign at the high schools and in the community during the target week. Supporters in Salt Lake are also planning a two-day team early in the subscription drive to sell the Militant at mine portals and door to door in Price, Utah.
Next week's issue will carry a chart of the goals Militant supporters have adopted for the subscription campaign and will project an international goal for the drive. Supporters of the Militant who would like to set a goal should fax it in right away.