Vol.62/No.16 April 27, 1998
Workers At Plant Gates, Picket Lines Subscribe To The 'Militant'
BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
As the drive to win new readers to the Militant,
Perspectiva Mundial, and the Marxist magazine New
International reaches the midpoint, Socialist Workers
candidates and campaign supporters are using the campaign
newspaper to reach farm workers, meat packers, workers on
strike, farmers, and students. While distributors in some
areas are building momentum, there's work ahead to get the
circulation drive on schedule.
We welcome Militant supporters in France to the chart
this week. Young Socialists members in Paris adopted goals
for the subscription campaign, and have so far sold 10
copies of Nouvelle Internationale.
Organizing to meet lots of workers and youth - and
systematically following up with those who are interested in
the socialist press - is key to selling subscriptions. Below
are a few reports on recent sales activities.
*****
Rail worker Craig Honts reported from the Central Valley
region in California, "We have sold 11 subscriptions to the
Militant and one subscription to Perspectiva Mundial while
campaigning for Marklyn Wilson, Socialist Workers candidate
in the eighth Congressional District." Honts is part of a
regional team that will travel throughout the valley talking
to poultry workers, farm workers, and others. They will wrap
up the trip in Watsonville where a rally to defend bilingual
education is planned.
*****
Socialist Workers candidate Lea Sherman from Houston
wrote, "We have combined sales of the press and petitioning
to get my campaign on the ballot for the 29th Congressional
District." Sherman said a petitioning and sales team sold
two Militant subscriptions to Teamsters on the picket line
at Laidlaw Environmental Services, a hazardous waste
disposal plant in Deer Park, just outside of Houston. The
180 workers went on strike August 7 against Laidlaw when the
bosses demanded concessions that included an insurance co-
payment and an end to a pension plan. Management and
temporary workers are operating the plant.
"We sold a subscription to a striker who bought a copy
of the paper last year from a Militant supporter who came to
his house," Sherman said. "He recognized the member of the
sales team who had sold it to him and readily signed up for
the paper when he saw an article on the 252 locked-out oil
workers who continue their pickets at Crown Central
Petroleum."
Many Teamsters are familiar with the struggle of these
refinery workers against the Crown bosses, who insisted on
gutting their seniority and replacing the union workers with
temporary contract labor. Supporters of the socialist press
in Houston have sold seven Militant subscriptions to Crown
workers since the beginning of the sales drive -one right
after the team campaigned at Laidlaw and visited the Crown
picket line.
On April 9 a sales team drove to Texas A&M University in
College Station, where they set up a table in the "free
speech area" and sold a Militant subscription. They also
organized to get a representative of the Socialist Workers
campaign to speak to a class there.
*****
"So far, we've sold six copies of the new issue of the
Militant with the front cover article on the wharfies
struggle on the picket lines," wrote Militant supporter Ron
Poulsen from Australia, after receiving last week's bundle.
"We joined 500 other workers in a mass picket to
successfully prevent trucks with containers from entering
the Patrick terminal at Port Botany in Sydney." Poulsen
added that an all-day sales team in Parramatta, Sydney, sold
one Militant subscription, 12 copies of the paper and New
International no. 8 with the article "Che Guevara, Cuba, and
the Road to Socialism."
*****
"We met our target of selling six Militant
subscriptions for the week," reports Jill Fein from Atlanta.
"We sold a subscription to a student who came to the
Militant Labor Forum after meeting a sales team at Georgia
State University." One student attending the National
Conference of Black Political Scientists purchased a
Militant subscription and participants at the event also
bought 30 Pathfinder titles. Fein said Militant supporters
there sold a subscription to a woman from Ireland who was
standing at the front door of the Pathfinder Bookstore
waiting for it to open.
*****
"We sold nine copies of the Militant and one
subscription at the WHX (Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel) gate in
Yorkville, Ohio, on March 27," wrote Cecelia Moriarty and
Chris Marshall from Pittsburgh. "We set up a table of
Pathfinder literature across the street from the plant with
signs saying `U.S. Hands off Iraq' and `UAW wins strikers'
jobs back at Caterpillar.' One steelworker getting off work
decided right away to subscribe after hearing a brief
description of the paper. He had never seen the paper
before. We introduced ourselves as fellow steelworkers from
Pittsburgh and pointed out that the paper had covered and
supported their strike." The 10-month-long struggle of 4,500
steelworkers ended last July with the union winning an
industry-standard pension.
"Two people asked if it was a communist paper," the two
socialist steelworkers added. "One worker stayed to talk
because he was surprised that anyone would be a communist.
After a discussion about our election campaign and defense
of affirmative action, he bought a copy of the Militant."
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