The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 75/No. 16      April 25, 2011

 
(front page)
A working-class paper that
helps bring fighters together
 
Militant/Rebecca Williamson
Militant supporter Dan Fein, left, selling paper and Changing Face of U.S. Politics, by Jack Barnes, one of four books on special with subscription, at April 9 labor rally in New York City.

BY DOUG NELSON  
More than 900 new subscribers have signed up for the Militant since February, when sales of the working-class paper picked up in response to mobilizations toppling proimperialist dictators in Tunisia and Egypt and to labor protests from Wisconsin to London against government union-busting and austerity measures. Well over 200 readers have renewed subscriptions, as well.

In the process, workers and young people attracted to the fighting perspective of the Militant are meeting each other.

Rich Thomas, a bus driver from Vancouver, British Columbia, ran into supporters of the Militant at an April 2 labor solidarity rally of 1,500 unionists from both Canada and the United States in Blaine, Washington. “I came today as a bus driver for one of the contingents and found out this was a union rally, so I decided to participate,” he said. “Bus drivers are facing a takeback contract and unsafe conditions because the company is cutting bus maintenance.”

Thomas was one of 15 there who subscribed to the Militant. He also bought a copy of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions by Jack Barnes, one of four books on special sale with a subscription. The following weekend he spoke at a Militant Labor Forum in Seattle on “Continuing Solidarity and the Way Forward for the Labor Movement,” where he described worsening safety conditions bus drivers face. “I’m glad to meet socialists who have a vision of how society can be changed,” he told participants.

A steady flow of new subscriptions and renewals have come in over the last 10 weeks at an average weekly rate of some 110. This provides a solid groundwork for the April 23 opening of the Militant’s spring subscription campaign.

More than 100 copies were sold at an AFL-CIO labor rally April 9 in New York City’s Times Square. Fifteen people bought subscriptions. And four new subscribers took advantage of the special book offer—with two picking up copies of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics and the other two getting Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, also by Jack Barnes.

In New York the same day, a couple subscriptions were sold at a Borough of Manhattan Community College class where socialist worker Dan Fein reported on his recent solidarity visits to Madison, Wisconsin, and Cairo, Egypt. And two more subs were sold at an antiwar march at Union Square.

The weekend was good for many Militant distributors. Fortunately, supporters of the paper in Des Moines forgot to send in a request to lower their bundle to 50. They ended up selling 111!

Militant supporters in Chicago ran out of their bundle of 75 at a labor rally, where they sold nine subscriptions. A member of the Carpenters union got a subscription with a copy of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power.

“I’m here today to make sure the struggle that started with Wisconsin doesn’t die,” said Timothy Olaosebikan, a health-care worker originally from Nigeria, who got a subscription along with a copy of Is Socialist Revolution in the U.S. Possible? by Mary-Alice Waters.

Supporters of the Militant in San Francisco sold 16 subscriptions and 62 papers at a Cesar Chavez Day Parade April 9 and antiwar protest the next day.  
 
 
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