The sales drive begins March 20 and extends until May 17. Responding to increased interest in the socialist press among working people and youth, campaigners aim to sell a total of 2,000 subscriptions to the Militant and 500 to Perspectiva Mundial. First-time readers of both publications can pick up a subscription for the newly reduced rate of $5 (see “How to Subscribe”).

At their national meeting held over the March 13-14 weekend in Pittsburgh, socialist coal miners, most of whom are members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), signed on as volunteers for teams to sell the socialist press to miners and others in the coalfields of southern West Virginia and New Mexico. The teams will begin their efforts on the first weekend of the eight-week campaign.

Tony Lane, a miner in Pittsburgh, reported, “one team from Colorado and Utah will be heading to Farmington, New Mexico, and the surrounding towns.” Coal miners in the BHP complex there recently carried out a two-week strike, winning a wage increase and an increase in the allowance for Navajo traditional medicine, he added.

Another team is headed to the coalfields of southern West Virginia. Lane said that team “will find out more about the recent fight by miners at Rockspring Development’s Camp Creek/Ben Haley mine, where they forced the bosses to recognize the UMWA.

“There are some 230 workers at the mine,” said Lane. “The victory was delayed by a several-month court battle, in which more than 30 miners testified to prevent the votes of foremen and supervisors being used to deny their election win.”

Meeting the same weekend, socialist meat packers began putting together a team to travel to Storm Lake, Iowa, where workers at a Tyson-owned plant that employs 1,200 are in the middle of a drive to organize into the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

The socialist miners took a national sales goal of 50 Militant and 12 PM subscriptions—more than double their goal during the last sales campaign. The national gathering of meat packers decided to aim for a total of 213 subscriptions to packinghouse workers—100 to the Militant and 113 to PM.

Partisans of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial have also launched a campaign to raise $85,000 to cover the publication’s publishing and mailing expenses. That complementary effort runs concurrently with the sales campaign, ending on May 17.  
 
 
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