Hoeppner said he hopped on one of two buses from Detroit sponsored by the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) that brought unionists to support the locked-out workers at the AK Steel rolling mill. The USWA organized buses from Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana to bring unionists to the event.

Hoeppner is a partisan of the international campaign to sell 1,100 subscriptions to the Militant , 300 subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial, and 450 copies of the Marxist magazine New International. Supporters of the Militant in Detroit are off to a good start in the drive to win new readers to the socialist press, selling five subscriptions in the first days of the campaign.

They sold two more Militant subscriptions on the bus to workers who had been locked-out by the Detroit News/Free Press and another one at the Mansfield rally to an AK Steelworker, who they had met a week earlier in Detroit at an ox roast in solidarity with the locked-out workers.

Hoeppner said the unionist he talked to on the bus trip to Mansfield "said this was his first demonstration. He had been a beef farmer in a small town near Bay City before he started working in a plant organized by the USWA. He had volunteered for two organizing drives, one of them successful, going door-to-door in working-class neighborhoods explaining the importance of the union. He started reading the paper I gave him on the bus then later he bought the subscription."

Hoeppner explained how supporters in Detroit planned to get back to new people they had met in previous weeks to approach them about buying subscriptions. "We sold a subscription to a student at Wayne State University who went with us to show support for the students at the University of Michigan occupying the meeting quarters of a club whose practices are racist and offensive against Native Americans," he said. "She had previously come to a Militant Labor Forum and bought a few Pathfinder pamphlets.

"This is basic follow-up. We have talked to a number of individuals but now we have our first results," Hoeppner said, noting the potential to recruit youth to the Young Socialists through such activity.

Henry Hillenbrand, a USWA member in Cleveland, reported that participants at the Mansfield rally also purchased four Pathfinder titles, including Mother Jones Speaks and Two Speeches by Malcolm X. "One of the unionists who bought a Militant sub was a veteran of the USWA strike last year at RMI Titanium in Niles, Ohio," said Hillenbrand. "He was already familiar with the paper."

Supporters of the campaign in Cleveland have sold five Militant subscriptions, including one on a bus to the March 21 farmers' rally in Washington and one to a worker at a plant where the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) recently won its first contract.

In Chicago, one supporter of the sales drive, who is a member of UNITE, jumped on the USWA bus in Indiana and sold two Militant subscriptions. "So far we have sold six subs to the socialist newsweekly including three at the March 26 report from the Havana Book Fair meeting here," wrote Cappy Kidd. "And we just sold a sub on the Overnite picket line in Indianapolis, Indiana."

Kidd said that over the next few days Militant supporters are planning to travel with a group of farmers from Illinois and Wisconsin to the Family Farm Defenders Conference in Durant, Mississippi. They will also join in a celebration of John Mitchell Day on April 1 organized by two locals of the United Mine Workers of America in central Illinois. That event will be held outside the former strike headquarters of the Freeman coal miners.

Socialist workers in Miami sold two subscriptions going door-to-door in the Black community. "We sold one of the subs to a Black man who commented on the impact the civil rights movement had on Blacks living in Miami Beach where they used to need a pass to go to work," said Rollande Girard, a garment worker. "He was very supportive of affirmative action."

Girard said supporters of the sub drive plan to boost their efforts over the next week by sending someone to the five-day march called by the mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, to demand removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol.

Black farmers in Wildwood, Florida, have invited farmers Karl Butts, Gladys Williams, and Willie Head to speak at a meeting there. Butts and the other two were part of a delegation of six farmers who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Cuba. Another meeting for the farmers to speak about their experiences is planned April 4 at the University of South Florida.

As the campaign shifts into high gear, the Militant encourages its supporters to send in articles and notes on sales activities and photos of participants in action at political events, at plant gates, and elsewhere. Comments from new readers among co-workers, students, and others are welcome.  
 
 

Socialists in Seattle take sales campaign to co-workers

John told me how he did it and how he intends to follow up: "Last week I saw an Iranian co-worker who I had briefly met a year ago. A recent Militant had featured an article on the Iranian elections. I showed him the issue and he took it home. The next day he came up to me and said, 'That was a very good article. How can I get this newspaper?' I told him he could get a subscription. On the following day he paid for his subscription saying, 'I really like a political newspaper.'

"I plan to go back to show him New International no. 7 featuring the article 'Opening Guns of World War III,' which also includes resolutions by Iranian communists on the Iran-Iraq War," said Naubert.

"The other worker I sold to is a young union official who works in the plant and is head of the communications committee for the IAM local. He has been working with the women's' issues committee, which recently sponsored a march of Excel workers to a SPEEA picket line to show solidarity. The march was enthusiastically received by the striking workers. This worker also bought at the same time a copy ofCapitalism's World Disorder."  
 
 
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