The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.42           November 25, 1996 
 
 
YS Recruitment Can Propel Subscription Drive  

BY MAURICE WILLIAMS

The international effort to win new subscribers to the Militant will need a big push in the final week to wrap up a successful campaign. Using the sales target week November 16-24, Militant supporters can go all out to build the Young Socialists and the regional socialist educational conferences at the end of the month. Expanding circulation of the Militant, Perspectiva Mundial, and the Marxist magazine New International is linked to recruiting workers and youth to the communist movement.

Seventeen people have joined the Young Socialists in the last two weeks, bringing new forces into the subscription campaign. One YS member from Chicago joined rail workers and other supporters on a four-day Midwest regional packinghouse team.

"In the first week of November, we spent four days talking to packinghouse workers at plant gates in western Iowa, eastern Nebraska and southern South Dakota," wrote Militant supporter Mike Galati. The team sold three subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial, one Militant subscription and several single copies of both publications.

"While talking to workers at the Hormel plant in Fremont, Nebraska," Galati added, "we learned about a recent contract vote at an Excel plant in Schyuler, Nebraska, barely 50 miles up the road." The workers there explained that they had recently voted to reject a concession contract offered by the company. "The company is offering to increase the pay rate on some of the jobs, but not all," explained Miguel Hernández, a 27-year-old worker in the plant. "They also want a four-year contract instead to three years like the last one."

Galati said that the high point of the team was a sale outside the John Morrell plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The socialists campaigners sold 18 copies of the Militant, 11 issues of Perspectiva Mundial and one subscription to the Spanish- language monthly to meatpackers there.

Holly Harkness, an auto worker at American Axle in Detroit, said, "I sold two subscriptions to co-workers on the assembly line where I work." American Axle is a former General Motors parts plant of 3,500 workers. GM sold the plant in 1994.

Harkness said she asked one worker who seemed open-minded about politics, "Do you like to read?" He replied "yes" and bought a subscription to the Militant when offered to him. "That makes me think there's more people like him out there," she added.

Harkness said supporters of the subscription drive in Detroit had a thorough discussion on how they had fallen behind schedule, and now "everyone thinks we can make this goal. It's just a matter of getting out."

Emily Fitzsimmons, a rail worker at Burlington Northern - Santa Fe in Seattle, reports that the subscription campaign has pushed ahead of schedule there. "We have sold 37 Militant subscriptions, 18 PM subscriptions and 20 NIs." Alaric Dirmeyer, a young worker in Spokane, bought two copies of New International. He asked to join the YS and set up a founding meeting on November 11 to establish a YS chapter there.

Jason Welling, a 16-year-old high school student in Shoreline, a suburb of Seattle was voted into the YS chapter this past week. Welling bought the YS pamphlet and a six-month subscription to the Militant. Both he and Dimeyer are planning to attend the regional socialist education conference in San Francisco.

Members of the International Association of Machinists in Seattle have sold 11 subscriptions to the Militant to co-workers at Boeing and the Todd shipyards. One co-worker at Boeing who had purchased a copy of Women's Evolution: From Matriarchal Clan to Patriarchal Family by Evelyn Reed bought a one-year subscription to the Militant.  
 
 
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