BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
"Leading up to the strike deadline by the Brotherhood of
Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE) against Amtrak last week,
discussion on the pending union action was intense on the
job," wrote Ruth Robinett in an October 21 note to the
Militant. Robinett is a member of United Transportation Union
Local 1370 and works for Amtrak in New York.
During that period, socialists sold 26 copies and two subscriptions to the Militant to rail workers there, Robinett said. Of those, 15 single issues and one subscription were sold to fellow unionists on the job and the remaining by two teams of Militant supporters at the entrance of the Amtrak station in New York. "Many workers noted the contrast between the Militant's coverage and the articles on the possible BMWE strike in the big-business press."
Another highlight of the seventh week of the Militant/Perspectiva Mundial subscription drive was sales at the October 16 - 19 Claridad festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Militant supporters from the Caribbean island and from Atlanta, Miami, and Newark, New Jersey, took part and set up a booth at the event. They sold $1,300 worth of Pathfinder books and other literature, including 17 copies of Nueva Internacional, the Spanish-language sister publication of the Marxist magazine New International. In addition, they sold 53 subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial and two Militant subs. "Books by Ernesto Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Malcolm X were among the most popular," said Rollande Girard, a member of the United Steelworkers of America and the Socialist Workers candidate for Miami City Commission, District 5.
"Tens of thousands of young people, workers, and others participated in the annual festival sponsored by Claridad, a weekly newspaper that supports Puerto Ricós independence from the United States," Girard said. "This year the festival was dedicated to Che Guevara because of the 30th anniversary of his death in combat in Bolivia. The main slogan was, `Che: A man who lived by his ideas.' The banner that adorned the festival's central stage had a portrait of Che and read, `Now is the time to bring them back home,' referring to 15 Puerto Rican independence fighters currently incarcerated in U.S. jails."
"Che was a revolutionary and this is what we the students like," Mariela Collazo, a student at the University of Puerto Rico, told Militant reporters. Among those who subscribed at the San Juan event was Harry Barbosa, a repairman at the Puerto Rico Telephone Company and a member of the Independent Union of Telephone Employees (UEIT). Barbosa had participated in the October 1 UEIT strike and demonstration of some 100,000 people that day against the government's attempt to privatize the telephone company. "I oppose privatization because those who will mostly be affected will be the consumers," Barbosa said. The attempted sale of the company will also result in job cuts, he told Girard.
Young Socialists, Socialist Workers Party members, and others are finding a similar response through sales on campuses, door-to-door in working-class communities, and at political events. During the October 17 - 19 conference of Anti-Racist Action in Columbus, Ohio, YS and SWP members sold 4 Militant subscriptions, two copies of New International, and 10 Pathfinder books and pamphlets to the nearly 300 participants, reported Kibwe Diarra from Cleveland. Socialist Workers candidates are also using their election campaigns to promote the socialist press. In Atlanta for example, Doug Nelson, SWP candidate for mayor of that city, and Arlene Rubenstein, socialist candidate for school board there, took part in campus meetings October 13 - 14 where Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi spoke. Nelson and Rubenstein's supporters participated in the discussion on the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and sold 12 copies of the Militant, 12 copies of the Pathfinder pamphlet Palestine and the Arabs' Fight for Liberation, and two copies of New International no. 7 with the article "The Opening Guns of World War III; Washington's Assault on Iraq."
Perspectiva Mundial is a particularly hot seller. In addition to the Puerto Rico sales, many new subscribers signed up during the October 12 marches for immigrant rights held in several U.S. cities and other related activities.
At one such rally of 800 in Chicago, for example, YS members and others sold 22 PM subs. With these successes, we have already surpassed by 53 the goal of selling 400 PM subs, one week before the drive ends, as well as surpassing the New International goal.
Socialist workers and others around the world are using the momentum from increased sales in the last two weeks in an all-out effort to meet the Militant subscription goal by the October 26 deadline as well. The Militant will count on the final chart all subscriptions received at the business office in New York by Wednesday, October 29.