The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 78/No. 37      October 20, 2014

 
‘Militant follows fights of workers worldwide’
(front page)
 
BY MAGGIE TROWE
As Militant supporters took part in labor actions and social protests and knocked on doors in working-class neighborhoods last week, 290 people subscribed for the first time or renewed their subscriptions. The international drive to expand the readership of the socialist newsweekly is still ahead of schedule, but we need to pick up the pace and average 324 subscriptions per week for the next three weeks to complete the drive in full and on time.

Atlanta Militant supporters raised their quota by five subscriptions and Omaha by three, bringing the total pledged to 2,429.

Katy LeRougetel and Francois Bradette drove from Calgary, Alberta, to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Oct. 5 to join the picket line of members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 615. The city locked the workers out Sept. 20 in a fight over wages and pensions. When transit worker Michelle Jabour saw the Militant headline on the attempt by Bombardier to impose two tiers of pensions on workers at its Ontario rail car plant, she said, “Please tell me the workers won.” She and five others subscribed to the Militant.

In Calgary Joe Young and Félix Vincent Ardea met Clarice Blacksmith when they knocked on her door. She talked about the Sept. 27 march protesting police brutality against First Nation people and demanding an investigation into the July killing of Colton Crowshoe, a Native youth. “The paper’s truthful,” Blacksmith said. “Nobody has the guts to speak the truth today.”

Militant supporters from Seattle drove to Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, to find out how workers view the recent agreement signed by grain bosses in the region with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

“I remember this paper from the Longview lockout,” one Portland dockworker said, referring to the 2011 union battle against the EGT grain company in Longview, Washington. “It is excellent.”

“We stayed out after sundown because we found people who wanted to talk about their own union or the Ebola crisis or whatever was on their mind,” said Mark Downs, a retired longshoreman who was part of the team to Portland. Six people subscribed by the end of the day. Two of them bought a copy of Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs at half price with the subscription. (See ad below for special book offers for subscribers.)

“I wasn’t sure what to expect when you first walked up the driveway, but I’m really glad you came by,” waitress Jennifer Dacus told Mike Fitzsimmons in Houston Oct. 5. Fitzsimmons is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Texas. “The minimum wage for tipped employees hasn’t changed in years, and our hours have been cut so the company doesn’t have to provide health insurance.”

“I like the Militant because it carries the most complete information about what’s going on in the world and how other workers are going through the same experiences as the farmworkers of the San Joaquin Valley,” Primitivo Santiago Gutiérrez told Gerardo Sánchez as he renewed his Militant subscription in Madera, California, Oct. 4. Gutiérrez said he was impressed by reading “how Cuba, a poor country, can send doctors to Africa, while the United States, a very developed country, won’t.”

“The Militant is the only paper where you can find out about strikes,” said Richard Hargesheimer during the Nebraskans for Peace conference in Lincoln, Nebraska, Oct. 4. Hargesheimer is active in Nebraskans for Justice, a group fighting to free Mondo we Langa and Ed Poindexter, former Black Panthers framed up in the death of a police officer in Omaha in 1970. Nine conference participants subscribed.

In East Dundee, Illinois, Brian Kreger, a member of Machinists Local 701 on strike against Al Piemonte Chevrolet, bought a subscription from Dan Fein, saying “The Militant helps us understand that we are not the only ones struggling.”

“Too often people only talk about local things. I like to follow what is happening all over the world,” Vera Lanciotti, 90, said while buying a subscription and Teamster Rebellion from Militant supporters who knocked on her door in Philadelphia. Lanciotti comes from a family of coal miners and steelworkers. “Large families living in one-room shacks, many of them immigrant, many who did not speak any English, worked together” to build the unions, she said. She is looking forward to reading about working-class resistance.

To join with us to get the paper around at union struggles, door to door, or other activities, see page 8 for the distributors nearest you.
 
 
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