BY GREG McCARTAN
from the Militant, vol.61/no.19 May 12, 1997 Over the past several weeks socialists around the world have made substantial progress in campaigning to sell and distribute revolutionary books, the Militant, Perspectiva Mundial, and New International. In the last three weeks alone, unionists and other workers, Chicano rights fighters, students, protesters against police brutality and the Ku Klux Klan, and participants in dozens of political conferences have purchased nearly 800 subscriptions to the Militant; 200 subscriptions to its Spanish-language sister magazine Perspectiva Mundial, and 359 copies of New International. While figures for the number of books and pamphlets published by Pathfinder will be compiled and published in next week's Militant, reports from local areas indicate that socialists in most areas have far exceeded their monthly goals in April.

Teams of volunteers are working this week to fill and send out special orders made by Pathfinder bookstores for a range of titles made available by the publisher at special discount prices. The bookstores are passing on the savings to readers. With orders now arriving in cities across the country, socialists can turn May into a "book blitz" month, while continuing to reach out with irreplaceable news and analysis provided by the Militant each week.

This heightened activity will lead into the convention of the Socialist Workers Party, which will be held June 11-14 in Oberlin, Ohio. There, socialists from around the world and those interested in joining the party or the Young Socialists, will discuss central issues in world politics and how best to build the communist movement.

This final chart on the seven-week subscription drive registers a real come-from-behind effort in numerous cities where socialists organized to meet or exceed their goals for both the subscription drive and the Militant fund drive. We got off to a slow start on the drive in most cities, and socialists in several major centers fell well short of their goals. Despite these shortcomings, by pressing forward with an international effort Militant supporters reached 91 percent of the goal for the paper and 85 percent of the goal for subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial. Supporters sold more than 900 copies of the Marxist magazine New International -595 out of a goal of 600 in local areas, plus 317 at the Young Socialists convention, where New International was a top seller.

One lesson of this drive is the need to schedule a target week earlier than was organized this time around, and to utilize the full seven weeks to be on a real weekly campaign.

Initial results indicate socialists in industrial unions took a small step forward over recent drives in sales to their co-workers. Since Washington's drive toward war abroad can only be carried out by inflicting huge defeats on the labor movement at home, there will be growing interest among unionists in the Militant's socialist explanation of world politics and proposals on a road forward for working people. With the continued assault by the employers -and bubbling resistance by workers in the auto, steel, rubber, and other industries - the experience gained over the past seven weeks in sales on the job can be a good starting point for continued efforts to broaden the number of unionists reading revolutionary books and papers.

For example, Leonel Cabrera, a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees who works at Wilen Manufacturing the Atlanta, reports this week that Militant supporters there sold two subscriptions to the socialist newsweekly and three to Perspectiva Mundial in the last two days of the campaign. "Sales of Pathfinder books during the month of April helped to increase our confidence that co-workers would respond to an explanation of what is in the paper and why workers need to read it every week. We reached out to many people we had not talked with yet. Ten Pathfinder books, including many `super-saver' sales books were sold this month."

At an April 20 demonstration of farm workers and their supporters in Yakima, Washington, socialists sold 12 subscriptions to the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, plus a number of Pathfinder titles, reports Robbie Scheer, a member of the IAM who works at Boeing. "Two Chicano student activists from Yakima and a shipyard worker from Seattle purchased The Politics of Chicano Liberation; a farm worker bought La Revolucion Traicionada [The Revolution Betrayed], by Russian communist leader Leon Trotsky. An immigrant rights conference in the Yakima Valley April 26 and a march for justice for farm workers in Mount Vernon, Washington, May 4 will provide good opportunities for more sales," Scheer writes.

"We had a big turnaround in sales of New International in the last week of the drive," writes Ray Parsons from Des Moines, "with a United Auto Workers member purchasing a copy of NI no. 4 that includes `The Fight for a Workers and Farmers Government in the United States,' by Jack Barnes; a new subscriber bought NI no. 10 featuring an article by Barnes on `Imperialism's March Toward Fascism and War'; and a new Young Socialists member purchased NI nos. 1 and 6 to add to those he purchased at the YS convention at the end of March." Parsons adds that United Food and Commercial Workers members sold five subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial to their co-workers the final week of the drive.

The Militant will continue to feature articles each week on sales efforts by socialists around the world. Small articles, notes, and other information sent to the paper helps generalize our experiences and give some real life to the work to expand distribution of Pathfinder books and the revolutionary press.  
 
 
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