BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Supporters of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial(PM) face a challenge to put the subscription drive on schedule, but the campaign is starting to pick up steam. Last week marked the highest sales yet in the eight-week sales campaign. For the last three weeks of the drive, supporters of the socialist press need to average above 250 Militant subscriptions per week to reach the international goal of 1,400 by May 10.

Activists in Los Angeles stepped up the pace over a 10- day time span, selling 36 Militant subscriptions and 20 subscriptions to the Spanish-language monthly Perspectiva Mundial.

"Our campaign team to the Central Valley region inspired others to stay out longer and supporters to take days off from work to join sales teams," said garment worker Gale Shangold, who is also the Socialist Workers candidate for governor in California. "We sold 20 Militant subscriptions last week, including 13 on April 20 - seven at the Earth Day event in Santa Monica and six at the University of San Diego, California.

"We sold four Perspectiva Mundial subscriptions to farm workers in Oxnard and three subscriptions to the Spanish monthly at a rally to defend bilingual education in Watsonville," she added.

Sam Farley, an airline worker, who participated in the Central Valley regional sales team, said, "The first leg of the trip was to the Santa Fe rail yard. We sold a Militant subscription to a conductor who was impressed with our candidate for Congress, fellow rail worker Marklyn Wilson. He said we need more workers to run this type of campaign."

Shangold said Militant supporters set up a literature table at a demonstration for affirmative action where they sold two copies of the Marxist magazine New International and one subscription to the Militant. "Our table was a center of discussion."

The garment worker said they are also helping to build a tour of a member from the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) and planning a stall at the Los Angeles Times Bookfair for the weekend.

"We sold four Militant subscriptions and two copies of New International in our most successful week of the sales drive so far," wrote Ron Poulsen from Australia. "We sold 21 copies of the Militant and two subs on the picket lines to striking wharfies (dockworkers), including one at Darling Harbour in Sydney, and one at the Newcastle picket line."

Poulsen said supporters of the paper set up a book stall at a family BBQ in Newcastle sponsored by the Maritime Union of Australia, which organizes the dockworkers. "One wharfie remembered us from a previous trip up to Newcastle and subscribed right away. We sold five Militants at the picnic as well, including one to a seaman who had bought a Militant from a street stall in Auckland, New Zealand, when his ship docked there."

Poulsen said the 76 copies of the Militant they sold during the past week "were directly attributed to increased interest in the socialist press as a result of the wharf struggle - the most Militants in a single week here that I can remember!"

Socialist workers in Miami regrouped after a one week lapse. "This past week we made a decision to fight for more teams to get out for longer amounts of time," reported Angel Lariscy. "This will help us get back on schedule after falling behind for the first time in the drive."

Lariscy said they sold 22 copies of the Militant and one copy of Perspectiva Mundial to members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) at the plant gate of U.S. Sugar in Clewiston, Florida. Socialist workers at United Airlines in Miami sold two subscriptions to co-workers and one copy of New International. Rail workers at the CSX railroad purchased a Militant subscription and New International no. 5, featuring the article "The Coming Revolution in South Africa."

"While selling the Militant in working-class neighborhoods and at campus tables, we are building a May 2 meeting entitled, `100 Years of Resistance: the struggle of the Puerto Rican and Cuban People to U.S. imperialism,'" Lariscy continued. "We got a good response. A Puerto Rican woman bought a PM sub and students at Florida Atlantic University purchased two subscriptions to the Militant and a copy of New International.

Supporters of the Militant across the world continue to receive a good response when they sell at plant gates. "At our most recent two days of plant gate sales we sold 25 Militants and one subscription to Case foundry workers in Racine, Wisconsin," reported Cappy Kidd from Chicago. "And a team outside an LTV steel mill sold eight papers at the plant gate."

John Staggs from Philadelphia said he joined a regional team that sold 22 Militants to members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union who were voting on a contract. More than 1,000 unionists were attending a meeting at the Merck plant in West Point, Pennsylvania. "They were especially interested in the coverage of other union struggles going on."

Staggs reported that a sales team in York, Pennsylvania, sold 28 copies of the Militant and one subscription to members of the United Auto Workers union at Caterpillar, who were attending their monthly union meeting. They had just heard an announcement that the Caterpillar plant there will close by the end of the year. One worker who was just laid off remarked, "As I see it, the fight is just starting and things will get a lot worse if we don't keep fighting."

Supporters of the Militant in New York have been getting out to Albanian and Irish neighborhoods, reported Phyllis O'Grady. "On April 19 a literature table in the Bronx calling for `Independence for Kosovo' and `No to NATO expansion' drew a lot of attention," she said. Partisans of the socialist press at that table sold three Militant subscriptions. "Many of the Albanian immigrants who came by the table were interested in hearing Argiris Malapanis speak," O'Grady reported. Malapanis recently returned from the Balkans where he headed a Militant reporting team.

With the recent development in the Irish freedom struggle, partisans of the socialist press in New York have also stepped up sales in the Irish community. "On April 17 we sold more than 30 copies of the Militant at a Manhattan meeting of some 500 people who came to hear Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, a longtime figure in the Irish freedom struggle," O'Grady reported.

An April 19 team to Woodside, Queens, an area where many Irish immigrants live, netted one subscription each to the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, as well as a copy of the issue of New International that features articles on the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Ireland by Bolshevik leaders V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky.  
 
 
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