BY NAOMI CRAINE
The Militant will soon be launching a fall subscription drive to sign up new readers. From New York to Los Angeles, from London to Sydney, socialist workers and youth have been meeting over the past few weeks to assess the political openings to reach out broadly with this campaign. They are adopting local goals and mapping out plans for the drive, which will also include sales of the socialist monthly in Spanish Perspectiva Mundial and the Marxist magazine New International.
The exact dates of the drive, which will begin in mid- September and continue for about two months, will be announced in an upcoming issue of the Militant.
We have decided to change an important aspect of how drives have been carried out over the last several years. This campaign will focus entirely on signing up new readers for 12-week introductory subscriptions. Renewals of current subscriptions, which made up a substantial percentage of subs counted during the last circulation campaign, will not be credited toward local goals.
Supporters who have already set a tentative goal for an eight-week drive are encouraged to have another collective discussion in light of these proposals.
Campaigning in working-class areas
Socialist workers and youth sell the Militant and other
communist literature year round as they participate in
political events and social protest activities. We bring
the paper to co-workers on the job, students on campus, and
workers on the street as part of regular political work.
In a subscription drive, though, members and supporters of the Socialist Workers Party, international communist leagues, the Young Socialists, and others drastically alter our normal routine and activity to campaign for a specified period of time to reach goals set before the drive starts.
These campaigns help supporters of the paper get out to new areas, especially focused on working-class areas, by setting up literature tables on street corners, going door- to-door, organizing several-day sales teams in their region, and selling the paper at factory gates. In addition, supporters sell on college campuses, at political gatherings, and at events such as upcoming Labor Day marches. The aim is to meet thousands of workers and youth we have not spoken to before and sign them up for the socialist press.
For decades, this has been the political value in nationwide, centralized subscription drives carried out by the communist movement. It is a way the working-class public can cast a vote on the paper. In the course of the drive, supporters of the paper become better at explaining world politics.
In 1944, as World War II was still raging and with much of the national leadership of the SWP in prison for speaking out against the imperialist slaughter, the Militant launched a subscription campaign to sign up 3,000 new readers.
Explaining the importance of the sales drive, SWP national secretary James P. Cannon wrote from prison, "Our main object now...should be to get a wider spreading of our message while our case is still alive regardless of the immediate effect on our permanent subscription list. Three thousand papers going every week for six months to the same people, who have not been getting the paper before, should be more effective than the same number of papers being distributed, more or less at random."
Because they were reaching out broadly, socialist workers who took part in that sales drive were able to pick up on the shifting mood within the working class and greater openness to socialist ideas. The drive was a smashing success, reaching more than double the goal of 3,000 new readers. The response foreshadowed an explosion in labor struggles and rapid growth of the SWP.
Way to build the communist movement
Regular campaigns to broaden the readership of the
Militant remain one of the key ways of building the
membership and political influence of the communist
movement, including in periods that are not marked by big
labor battles or rising social struggles. Most people who
join the socialist movement start by picking up the
Militant and other literature.
Nick Clark and Trevor Miebrzydoski, two recent recruits to the Young Socialists in St. Louis, offer a good example. Talking to Militant correspondent Harry Ring at the SWP's convention in July, Miebrzydoski explained how he first came across the Militant at a socialist literature table on his campus. He began reading the paper and Pathfinder books, and participating in activities with socialist workers. His friend Clark soon joined in.
"From the beginning I found the paper very informative," said Clark, "especially on Cuba." He recently sent in his renewal and ordered several copies of New International.
Miebrzydoski said that until he got the Militant "I really didn't know about the workers' struggles." Other socialists "explained what the class struggle was, what it means internationally."
The Militant encourages readers to join the subscription drive. You can take on a sales goal or contact the distributor nearest you to become part of their efforts(see listings on page 12).
Even before the drive begins, Militant supporters will be organizing to get out the paper at a number of events, including Labor Day parades across the United States September 4. A special focus of this effort will be to join thousands of unionists from across the Midwest and other areas who will rally that day in Detroit to back the newspaper strikers. Readers who want to help sell the Militant there can contact the Detroit branch of the SWP.
Militant supporters in Illinois will be participating in Labor Day events along with striking Caterpillar workers and others in Decatur and Pontiac.
We encourage distributors to write in, both about their sales experiences and to share their plans for future sales activities. We can include information on regional sales plans, including invitations to join special sales activities, if we know about them a couple of weeks in advance.