Campaigners are also on pace to win 600 new subscribers and renewals to the Spanish-language Perspectiva Mundial.

The success so far has given the March 20-May 17 campaign real momentum. Already, campaigners in Atlanta, New York, Omaha, and the Twin Cities have raised their goals. A few more local raises are needed to bring the total goal to 2,000.

Here are a few highlights.

Fanning out across Iowa, southern Minnesota, and northern Nebraska over the March 27-28 weekend, a half-dozen campaigners from four Midwest cities brought the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial to packinghouse workers and others.

In South Sioux City, Nebraska, the meatpacking giant Tyson Foods runs a beef-packing plant that employs 2,000 workers. The bosses there recently fired 200 workers, claiming they had discovered that the workers were “illegal.”

David Rosenfeld, who joined the South Sioux City leg of the team, reported that three meat packers signed up for subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial and two to the Militant as the team went door-to-door.

“The coverage on the labor movement and struggles of immigrant workers really attracted workers trying to figure out how to respond to these mass firings,” Rosenfeld said. “The firings in Sioux City were also a big topic of discussion with workers from the Tyson plant in Storm Lake, Iowa.”

Kevin Dwire from Des Moines traveled to Storm Lake, where another Tyson plant employs hundreds of workers. He reported that the coverage of union struggles in the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial caught workers’ attention. Six signed up for subscriptions to the Spanish-language monthly. One worker also bought the Pathfinder book Cuba and the Coming American Revolution and the pamphlet The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning.

Dwire reports that 23 people subscribed to the Militant or Perspectiva Mundial on those weekend teams, the majority of them packinghouse workers.

“We had a fun beginning to the sub drive!” wrote Annette Kouri of Vancouver. “One of our first subscriptions to the Militant was at a sale outside the Fletcher’s pork-processing plant.” She added that Joe Young, a socialist who works at the plant, sold the subscription to a co-worker who was interested in the Cuban Revolution and Young’s recent visit to Havana as part of an international team at the Havana International Bookfair.

Kouri reported that another seven subs were purchased by a striking auto worker, co-workers on the job, and at a March 20 peace protest.

Arrin Hawkins from New York was part of a team at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. “There was a constant crowd around the table,” she reported. “We took 35 papers and ended up almost selling out of them. We brought back five subscriptions. There was a lot of interest in the April 25 march on Washington.”

Dan Fein added that they also sold more than a dozen books. “Most of them were books sold at SuperSaver sale prices that we had advertised on the table,” he said.

“A Haitian-born professor bought Capitalism’s World Disorder in Spanish and pre-paid for the French edition. While he was fetching money for the books a student bought the last French edition. When the professor returned he paid anyway and promised to stop by the Pathfinder book center for his book. He was also attracted to the coverage in the Militant on the U.S.-led occupation of Haiti and kidnapping of [Haitian president Jean-Bertrand] Aristide. He also bought an introductory subscription, and Marxism and Terrorism” by Leon Trotsky.

This reporter was part of a New York sales team to the Crown Heights district of Brooklyn, an area with a large Caribbean population. On the table we had two copies of Maurice Bishop Speaks, Pathfinder’s collection of speeches by the leader of the Grenada Revolution who was assassinated in 1983 during the overthrow of the revolution.

Roger, a computer and radio technician originally from Grenada, passed by the table and exclaimed, “That’s my prime minister!” He spoke about his experiences as a 16-year-old militiaman during the revolution, at the time of Bishop’s assassination, and the subsequent U.S. invasion.

Roger stayed by the table for the next two hours helping the team sell three subscriptions and a half-dozen books, including a copy of Maurice Bishop Speaks to a friend. He himself purchased a Militant subscription, the New International issue titled “U.S. Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War,” and The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning.

Promising to keep in contact with the socialist movement, he told members of the team, “I’m glad I ran into you—I’ve been looking for this.”

See sales drive chart
 
 
Related article:
‘Militant’ /‘Perspectiva Mundial’ fund drive campaigners reach out for contributors  
 
 
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