The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.25           June 24, 1996 
 
 
Join The Campaign To Sell Pathfinder Books And Pamphlets  

BY HILDA CUZCO

"Sales in Australia got off to a good start in June when a team of Pathfinder supporters visited Melbourne to take part in the annual national consultation of the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society," writes Linda Harris. "We found a lot of interest in the Militant's coverage of the recent conference of trade unionists in Cuba. All the copies we had of the their theses were snatched up, including two sold with introductory subs to the Militant." The team also sold a copy of New International no. 10, with the article "Imperialism's March toward Fascism and War," and one of the Spanish-language Nueva Internacional no. 2, on Che Guevara. They also signed up two members for the Pathfinder Readers Club. While in town, they visited a campus bookstore and received an order for 13 titles.

This is one illustration of the possibilities for combining sales of revolutionary books with subscriptions to the Militant, Perspectiva Mundial, and New International, during the final week of the international subscription drive and beyond.

The initial results of an international sales and reporting team in Germany are good as well. On their first day in Berlin, socialist workers from Sweden, the United States, and the United Kingdom sold 10 Militants and Pathfinder titles for a total of $72. The activists also visited to two commercial distributors, taking orders for 38 books, including two New Internationals.

Jerry Freiwirth from Houston reported that socialist workers attending the Labor Party convention in Cleveland June 6-9 got a good hearing. "Our sales figures include 13 Militant subscriptions, one Perspectiva Mundial subscription, one New International, nearly 70 single copies of the Militant and $500 of books, sold among the 1,400 participants at the conference," he reported.

Pat Grogan in Salt Lake City wrote in that a member of the United Steelworkers of America there sold four Pathfinder titles to a co-worker: The Wages System by Frederick Engels; Labor's Giant Step by Art Preis; Workers, Bosses, and Bureaucrats by Tom Kerry; and The Long View of History by George Novack.

Militant supporters in Chicago reported that they are back into regular plant gate sales. They sold six copies of the Militant to LTV steelworkers at a busy intersection. A week later at the same intersection, they sold 16 copies of the Militant and one copy of Perspectiva Mundial. The headline on the protests by workers in France demanding a shorter workweek to create more jobs in the June 10 issue received a lot of attention.

Many of these workers would probably be interested in reading An Action Program to Confront the Coming Economic Crisis. It proposes the labor movement carry out an international fight around demands such as shortening the workweek, defending affirmative action, and canceling the Third World debt - demands that can unite working people in all countries and of all nationalities in a common struggle against the effects of the capitalist economic depression. A French-language edition of the pamphlet, already available in English, Icelandic, Spanish, and Swedish, will be produced within a month.

In a phone conversation, Janice Lynn in Washington, D.C., described Pathfinder supporters' success in selling books at a range of political events. Sales at the June 1 March for Children there included Fredrick Engles's The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, the pamphlet Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle by Thomas Sankara, and a Perspectiva Mundial subscription.

At a demonstration for Mumia Abu-Jamal in the nation's capital, two of Thomas Sankara's pamphlets were sold in addition to Malcolm X Talks to Young People, Malcolm X on Afro-American History, and Genocide against the Indians by George Novack.

Another successful intervention took place at the Latino Congress, May 24-25, with three Perspectiva Mundial subscriptions, and titles such as the pamphlet Puerto Rico: U.S. Colony in the Caribbean by José Pérez and Feminism and the Marxist Movement by Mary-Alice Waters.

From Brooklyn, Nancy Rosenstock wrote that at the Puerto Rican Day Parade a team campaigning for the 1996 socialist slate for president and vice-president James Harris and Laura Garza, won two more readers to the Militant and two to Perspectiva Mundial. "One of the new young readers had met the socialist campaign at a rally held in support of the Yale strikers on Memorial Day," reports Rosenstock. "He is interested in going to Cuba along with other young people this summer with the Cuba Youth Exchange."

As socialist workers get out campaigning over the next couple weeks, particularly responding to the series of racist arson attacks directed against Black churches in the South, there are several Pathfinder titles that will be useful to highlight. These include Counter-Mobilization: A Strategy to Fight Racist and Fascist Attacks, and From Mississippi to Boston: The Demand for Troops to Enforce Civil Rights, both published as part of the Education for Socialists series.  
 
 
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