BY LAURA GARZA
"In the last 10 days supporters of the Militant have been on a campaign footing to participate in tens of demonstrations, rallies and meetings organized around the referendum," wrote a supporter from Montreal.
Participating in the activity and debate on the Quebec sovereignty struggle, opened doors to sell the socialist press more widely.
Militant readers in Canada, along with a few from Boston who joined for massive demonstrations in the days before the October 30 vote, took advantage of the opportunity. In ten days they sold 140 copies of the Militant and 11 subscriptions; 2 subscriptions to the Spanish-language monthly Perspectiva Mundial; and 60 copies of a French- language translation of articles from the International Socialist Review on the fight for national rights of the Quebecois and Native people in Canada.
The task for readers in every area participating in the international subscription drive is to be on a campaign footing in the remaining weeks of the drive.
We need to go at a running pace to get the average of 322 new subscriptions per week during the remaining three weeks to meet the goals. Turning to a variety of events and discussions on current issues facing the working class is the only way to do this.
By now, we should have been at 63 percent of the goal in Militant subscriptions, but we are only at 50 percent- one full week behind. We are ahead of schedule for Perspectiva Mundial, but only at 43 percent of the goal for New International. These figures, however, do not reflect sales from the nine-day target effort now under way.
With an all out effort it is possible to meet all three goals in full and on time. Now is the time for every individual distributor to make plans with their time through November 19, which includes taking personal goals, to ensure the success of the sub drive.
The Militant will fax to distributors the results of the target effort on Wednesday, November 8. That scoreboard will include all subscriptions received at the business office as of the previous evening, Tuesday, November 7.
In each city supporters can then use that information as they plan the last two weeks of sales, making their top priority meeting the international goals.
Reports from many areas indicate that distributors have stepped up their stride and are in the mode of finding every opportunity to sell subscriptions.
Socialist workers from Des Moines and Peoria, for example, teamed up to get to Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. They visited the University of Kansas; participated in a demonstration against the dictatorship in Burma; set up a literature table in the Black community in Kansas City; met with leaders of the campaign to free Native American activist Leonard Peltier who was framed up on murder charges and is serving two life sentences in Leavenworth, Kansas; and sold $200 of Pathfinder literature to a university bookstore.
Ardy Blandford wrote, "The key to the success of the team was keeping up the [literature] table for 5-6 hours at a time." They sold 7 Militant and 2 Perspectiva Mundial subscriptions, 2 New Internationals, and 28 single Militants in a day and half.
In St. Paul a hearing on a bill that would lift limits on snowmobiles and trucks in a northern Minnesota national park drew almost 1,000 people and three in the crowd bought introductory subscriptions to the socialist newsweekly.
In Stockholm supporters took the suggestion of other areas and organized Sunday sales resulting in selling two subscriptions in a student dorm area in Uppsala and 13 single issues. Chicago reports on plans to take advantage of people with time off to visit three different campuses in the region.
This kind of effort to get to a wide range of activities throughout the week, to use fully the weekends for sales mobilizations in working class communities and elsewhere, and to organize regional teams is what we need to catch up.