The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.13           March 31, 1997 
 
 
Selling Communist Press Will Build YS Nat'l Convention  

BY BRIAN TAYLOR
Finding the revolutionary-minded youth who will want to attend the March 28-30 Second National Convention of the Young Socialists, and getting involved in political activity with other workers and rebel-minded youth is at the heart of what supporters of the Militant are doing right now. That's what the international subscription drive - to win 1,400 new readers to the socialist weekly, 450 subscribers to the Spanish-language monthly Perspectiva Mundial, and sell 600 copies of the Marxist magazine New International - is all about.

Having gotten off to a slow start, supporters in several cities have mapped out plans to catch up. Ray Parsons in Des Moines, Iowa, says partisans of the Militant there plan to "increase the pace of sales around Des Moines and elsewhere; target Spanish speaking areas for door-to-door; and contact readers of the Militant, including contacts and members of the Young Socialists, about buying and reading New International." They are offering a payment plan for new readers who want to stock up on any or all of the magazine's 10 issues.

Socialists in Des Moines, as well as in New York and Newark, have decided to call local target weeks - with extra sales teams planned - for the week leading up to the YS convention, to make an extra effort to build the event.

Supporters in several cities indicate they have sold more than what's listed on the chart from the first week of the drive, which was compiled based on subscriptions received at the Militant office by Tuesday, March 18, at noon, E.S.T. It's important for distributors to send in their subscriptions and New International sales reports by that time each week, so charts can be up to date.

Sales in the unions
Militant supporters in several unions have started selling subscriptions on the job. In Newark, New Jersey, rail worker Jane Harris, a member of the United Transportation Union, sold two subscriptions to co-workers. She met a newly hired assistant conductor and within 15 minutes of discussion he bought a subscription. "He looked through the paper explaining that he didn't like it when people had questions about the world and he didn't have the answers," Harris said. She sold another subscription to a signal woman she rarely sees. "Always have Militants on the job and don't wait to introduce the paper," Harris told this reporter. "If you don't show people the paper it is a disservice to those who may really want it."

In New York, Deborah Liatos, a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, sold a Perspectiva Mundial subscription to a co-worker who "wanted the get socialist working-class perspective on the world," and a Spanish-language publication "that could explain in depth what's happening in Europe." Wendy Lyons, who works in the same garment shop sold a New International in Spanish on the rise and fall of the Nicaraguan revolution to a worker in the Dominican Labor Party.

Pete Clifford of London reports, "A team of Militant supporters from Paris, London, and Antwerp visited the Renault workers' two-week plant occupation at Vilvoorde near Brussels on Sunday March 16, and then participated with two sales tables in the 70,000-strong demonstration through the center of Brussels, against unemployment and in support of the Renault workers." That day seven copies of New International in French were sold. Fifteen demonstrators also bought copies of the recently published French-language edition of An Action Program to Confront the Coming Economic Crisis.

Socialists in Greece took advantage of the heightened political discussion and polarization around the uprising in Albania. Equipped with a literature table full of books, signs demanding "Hands off Albania" and "Equal rights for Immigrants," and a statement issue by the Committee of Communists, which was published in last week's issue of the Militant, a team went to a Greek farmers protest and sold well over a dozen books including New International no. 10 with the article, "Imperialism's March toward Fascism and War."

 
 
 
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