BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Just before GM closed down most of its North American operations due to the two strikes in Flint, Michigan, supporters of the Militant in several cities took the socialist newsweekly to auto workers as they entered and left the plants during shift changes.

"We took 30 copies of the paper to the Mansfield GM Metal Fab plant this afternoon," reports Brad Downs in a June 22 note from Cleveland. "We started selling around 2 p.m. and sold our last copy around 3 p.m." Downs said many workers were angry that production was continuing at that plant while the Flint plants were struck.

The same day members of the United Auto Workers bought 17 copies of the Militant at the plant gate of the Ford Motor Co. in Hapeville, Georgia. Workers there told Militant supporters they had taken up a collection for the GM strikers.

"We also sold eight copies of the paper at the UAW union hall in Doraville, Georgia," said Arlene Rubenstein, a member of the International Association of Machinists. "Some of the workers at the GM plant there were digging in for a long fight and some said they thought GM workers in Flint should settle the strike. You could easily see the polarization."

One Ford worker in New Jersey, Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Congress Susan Anmuth, campaigned with her supporters at the June 28 Puerto Rican Heritage Festival in Hoboken, New Jersey.

"We sold two subscriptions to the Militant, 15 copies of the socialist newsweekly and two copies of Perspectiva Mundial," said campaign supporter Luis Madrid.

One of the participants at the festival was a member of the teachers union in San Juan, Puerto Rico, who brought his daughter over to the campaign table. He said to her, "You'll want to check out these books." They bought El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba (Socialism and man in Cuba) by Ernesto Che Guevara and Nueva Internacional no. 1, which features the article "Opening Guns of World War III, Washington's Assault against Iraq."

Subscription renewal drive starts July 8
While continuing to reach out for new readers at plant gates and in working-class neighborhoods, supporters of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial will also campaign to increase the long-term readership of the socialist press through a four-week subscription renewal campaign starting July 8 and ending August 4. The local goals for the campaign will be printed in the next issue of the Militant.

One of the special things they will point to in asking subscribers to renew is the series of three interviews with generals of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba that has been featured in the International Socialist Review, published as a supplement to the Militant. (The first two, with Néstor López Cuba and Enrique Carreras, appeared in the June 22 and July 6 issues. The third, with José Ramón Fernández, will be published in next week's Militant.) Subscribers who renew for six months or longer can get any or all of the three interviews that they missed free from the Militant.  
 
 
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