BY LAURA GARZA
With a flurry of activity and subscriptions being mailed
and faxed in up to the last minute we reached all the goals
in the international drive to win new subscribers to the
socialist press.
The final tally for Militant subscriptions is 1,971 just above 100 percent of the goal.
Sales of Perspectiva Mundial were higher than expected from the beginning in many areas. This trend continued to the end, resulting in 652 Perspectiva subscriptions, or 124 percent of the goal.
Distributors also sold 780 copies of New International in the four languages the Marxist magazine is edited in - 104 percent of the goal.
A race to the finish
A preliminary tally at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, November 20,
put us just 10 subscriptions shy of the Militant goal and a
few dozen short on the New International.
The Militant editor sent a quick fax to distributors around the world with the results, which generated a rapid response.
Along with updated totals, subscriptions were sent in by airline workers, rail workers, and others just getting off their shifts. By the time we updated totals the next morning we were over the top.
In the last week of the campaign, socialist workers and youth cast an especially wide net. The following are some of the highlights from sales stories we received in the final days of the drive.
Puerto Rico team's success
A team to Puerto Rico was among the most successful.
Militant supporters from five cities in the United
States - Brooklyn, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, and
Washington, D.C. - joined Ron Richards, a reader on the
island, and sold 39 subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial, 3
to the Militant, and 12 copies of New International.
Seth Galinsky, a rail worker from Miami, was on the team. He reported they set up a literature table at the annual festival sponsored by the pro-independence newspaper Claridad and at the University of Puerto Rico.
In addition to subscriptions, more than 50 Pathfinder books and pamphlets were sold during the four-day festival, which attracted thousands. Twelve people attended a house meeting to discuss socialist ideas.
Detroit pulls out all stops
A reader from Detroit described a typical account of
what happened at the end of the subscription drive. The
countdown chart supporters had put up changed rapidly over
the last few days of the drive, especially on Friday,
November 17.
That evening "reports of the previous night's sales came in," the reader wrote. "New Internationals were sold to a coworker at a United Auto Workers-organized plant, a Guatemalan unionist in Canada, and a Palestinian activist. Then a team brought in two more Militant subscriptions from Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.
"Soon afterwards another team arrived, after a day at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. A campus organization called Womyn for Womyn had invited them to display the publications, along with Pathfinder Press titles, at a literature table. Members of the group and a professor accompanied the sales team all day, calling their friends over to join in political discussions and look over the books and periodicals.
"Sales results: 3 Militant subscriptions, 1 PM sub, 2 issues of New International, $50 in Pathfinder books, and a visit to an enthusiastic college bookstore manager.
Detroit strikers subscribe
"That night another literature table attracted attention
from some of the 800 people at an `ox roast' fund-raiser for
the Detroit newspaper strike, where strikers or their
supporters purchased 2 Militant subscriptions and 4 issues
of New International."
In addition to campuses, many of the new subscribers were won through door-to-door teams in working-class communities, and inside factories and mills.
In Birmingham, for example, during the last week of the drive, a team of supporters sold four Militant subscriptions in an apartment building in a working-class neighborhood, based on the paper's coverage of the Million Man March.
Socialists in the United Mine Workers of America, United Auto Workers, and United Transportation Union kicked in by selling another four subscriptions to co-workers. These sales put Birmingham distributors over the top in their Militant goal.
They then used the weekend to bring in more Perspectiva Mundial subscriptions with a visit to Oeonta, Alabama, where hundreds of Mexican workers live. Their New International sales total was boosted by one University of Alabama student in Birmingham who bought all 10 issues of the magazine because she wants to find out more about the Socialist Workers Party.
A South Korean student bought another two issues of the Marxist magazine, and three workers at a UAW-organized plant each bought a copy of New International.
Mandela visit to New Zealand
In Auckland, New Zealand, socialists took full advantage
of the visit of South African president Nelson Mandela. They
sold 17 Militant subscriptions in the last week of the
drive.
Three regular supporters in Greece report they ended the drive with daily sales and got four other people involved in the effort. Some helped to staff a table at the annual commemoration of the 1973 student uprising at the Polytechnic that marked the end of the military dictatorship then ruling Greece.
During the drive they sold 16 copies of the Greek translation of the article "Imperialism's March Toward Fascism and War," and 18 copies of the translation of the Pathfinder book titled The Truth About Yugoslavia.
Now that the subscription drive is over, readers in many cities are organizing to set a measured pace for continuing regular sales through street sales, on the job, and at political events.
In Des Moines, distributors asked to have this week's bundle rushed to them so they could get to plant-gate sales at local meatpacking plants with the coverage on the victory in winning parole for Mark Curtis.
In a number of cities, regional socialist educational conferences are being planned for the New Year's weekend. Many new subscribers may be interested in these events and are being contacted by local distributors about these meetings.