BY JILL FEIN
A team of Militant supporters from Salt Lake City, Utah, recently traveled to Denver and sold 7 subscriptions to the Militant, one subscription to Perspectiva Mundial, and 4 copies of the Marxist magazine New International.

The international campaign to sell the socialist press is going into the seventh week and now stands at 44 percent of the goal, 16 percent behind schedule. Supporters have sold 1,289 subscriptions to the Militant, 295 subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial, and 506 copies of New International.

A second target week to help get the campaign on schedule is planned for May 27 through June 4. Results from the last target week showed that many opportunities exist to reach out to workers, youth, and those involved in political struggles. Special teams to visit new areas were especially important to gaining some momentum for the drive.

The success of the sales team from Salt Lake City helped push the campaign there closer to schedule. Most of the subscriptions were sold at Metropolitan College of Denver.

"I was just sitting in my class thinking I needed to find a newspaper that tells the truth about issues, and here you are," said one woman as she walked out of her final exam.

Another woman who bought the paper was living in Kuwait when the Iraqi army invaded. She has been looking for a paper that has coverage on Kurdish struggles. One woman who wants to go to Cuba bought a subscription to the Militant because of its reporting on the Cuban revolution.

A student told the Militant sales team that her family keeps issues of the Militant around the house from the 1970s when her uncle, a Chicano activist, was killed by a bomb in Boulder, Colorado. He was involved in the struggle for Chicano rights and the government blamed him and another victim of the bombing, saying that they had blown themselves up. "Only the Militant printed the truth and my family has had a high regard for the paper ever since, although we didn't realize it was still being published," she said.

In Auckland, New Zealand, a sales team of Militant readers participated in the annual May Day march and rally, which this year was led by a contingent of protesters from the two-month-long occupation of Moutoua Gardens in Wanganui. Two young people who participated in the march, have since begun attending Militant Labor Forums. One of them who bought a subscription to the Militant at his first forum, said he had been interested in socialist ideas since high school, and came to the march hoping to find some socialists.

The May Day march linked up with one of the daily protests organized against the meeting of the board of governors of the Asia Development Bank. They oppose the bank's policies and highlight attacks on democratic rights during the massive security operation surrounding the conference.

On May 3, supporters of the Militant went to a 2,000- strong march organized by students to protest education fees, which linked up with a sit-in for several hours.

Militant supporters also attended a solidarity night that concluded a week-long conference of students from Asia and the Pacific, hosted by the Auckland University Students' Association. At the event, a student leader from Papua New Guinea who had been reading the Militant in the university library decided to subscribe.

The previous week, a sales team traveled after work to Waikato University campus, where they sold three subscriptions in the university dormitories.

A Militant reader in California reports that she sold three subscriptions in one day last week to co-workers at the United Airlines maintenance base in Oakland. "The discussions showed the breadth of world politics covered in the Militant," she wrote.

An Iranian co-worker was angry about the U.S. actions against Iran under the pretext of fighting "world terrorism." "This government conducts terror all around the world," he said. "I know - they put in the Shah."

This co-worker was impressed with an article in the Militant opposing the embargo, thanked her for bringing the paper to his attention, and bought a subscription on the spot.

A Chinese co-worker bought her first Militant to read the article on the California grocery workers strike. When she notice a major article across the page on the war in Vietnam, she asked, "Why does the U.S. government attack a small country like Vietnam?"

After a discussion about Washington's response whenever workers and peasants anywhere in the world stand up for their rights, she signed up for a subscription.

The third co-worker who bought a subscription is from Puerto Rico and was struck with the coverage about Mark Curtis. "This is outrageous!" he said. "I thought frame-ups like this only happened in my country."

He recounted what happened when he returned from a three- week tour of Cuba in the 1980s: "They locked us up and asked us if we'd learned to make bombs in Cuba. We visited farms, schools, and factories."

A three-day sales team of Militant supporters went to the southern Illinois coalfields and sold 50 copies of the Militant and 1 subscription each to the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, May 9-11. The team sold 20 copies of the Militant to members of the United Mineworkers Workers of America at six mine portals, and set up a literature table at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Contributing to this article were Felicity Coggan from New Zealand, Kathleen Denny from San Francisco, and David Marshall from Peoria, Illinois.  
 
 
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