BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
"The campaign to win new readers to the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial now has momentum in the Los Angeles area," said Carole Lesnick. "We are fighting to make and go over our goals and have come within reach of this. We only have 15 more Militant subs to sell along with eight copies of the Marxist magazine New International. Our PM goal remains a challenge, but we have mapped out a fighting plan to get us there."

Lesnick explained that socialist workers and members of the Young Socialists in Los Angeles began their final press to make the drive on October 31, sending sales teams door to door in the Black community. "We sold subscriptions and built the upcoming YS convention."

Another sales team went to the University of California in Santa Barbara where Rafael Cancel Miranda, a leader of the independence struggle in Puerto Rico, spoke. That team sold eight Militant subscriptions, two PM subscriptions, and two copies of New International. Other campus teams came back with three or four subscriptions each as well.

"We are meeting many young people who are interested in the YS and their convention, which is being held here in Los Angeles December 4-6. We are organizing dinners and parties to have more discussions with the young people we have met."

An all-out effort is needed to make the goals in the remaining days of the campaign to win new readers to the socialist press, which ends November 8. Success will be measured not only in meeting the goals on time, but also in the numbers of fighting workers and farmers who have become new readers during the course of their political activity. Organizing special all-day teams on campuses, selling in working-class neighborhoods, and going back to co-workers who have bought copies of the Militant and PM are key to successfully wrapping up the circulation drive.

"We want our next Militant bundle sent overnight to make sure we have enough papers for the last weekend of the sub drive," wrote Dick Geyer from Birmingham. "We are expecting our biggest turnout of the campaign. Today we went back to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and sold six Militant subscriptions and $100 worth of Pathfinder books and pamphlets. We are also organizing a two-day team to the coalfields where we hope to get more miners to subscribe to the Militant."

Some new subscribers have sent in checks after meeting activists on regional sales teams who visited their area several weeks ago. One student from Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio, sent a check for an introductory subscription to the socialist newsweekly after talking to supporters from Cleveland, Ohio. "We went there just last week on our way to the picket line of Steelworkers on strike against RMI Titanium in Niles, Ohio," said Mike Fitzsimmons from Cleveland.

Other regional teams included trips to packinghouses in the Midwest, textile plants and Black farmers in South Carolina, and coalfields in other countries as well as in the United States.

"We are planning to make more regular trips to the Hunter Valley coalfield several hours north of Sydney," wrote one supporter from Australia. Miners are continuing to resist the coal bosses' offensive against their jobs, working conditions and the union. "Our sales team, which included a supporter from New Zealand, sold five copies of the Militant at an afternoon shift change at the Hunter Valley no. 1 mine last Friday. Several of the miners recognized the Militant from our picketline visits there last year."

Miners are discussing how to take action against the sacking of union delegates and activists with a recent lay off at the mine. The mine owners, Rio Tinto, used new laws that allow them to ignore seniority to lay off more than 100 miners. The company is also facing resistance to its push for longer shifts at the nearby Howick mine.

TORONTO - This past weekend we participated in several activities, including a Toronto rally to protest the killing of Dr. Barnett Slepian, a Canadian Labour Congress Symposium on Bargaining for Equality, a conference attended by 50 people on Jamaican deportees at York University, and set up a literature table in the Parkdale community where one of the 138 schools slated for closure in the Toronto area is located. We also called back a number of people who had purchased copies of the Militant earlier to see if they may want to subscribe after reading it.

We were swamped at the Jamaican deportees conference at the lunch break, where we sold two copies of New International and $100 worth of Pathfinder titles.

A striker from Abitibi Consolidated in Newfoundland bought a subscription to the Militant at the Labour Congress Symposium. We paid a visit to a member of the Steelworkers union who we met at a march in Ottawa against the provincial government's cutbacks two weeks ago. In addition to buying a PM subscription, he also purchased two Pathfinder pamphlets: On the Jewish Question and Why Working People Should Support Quebec Independence.

We set up a table at the Reference Library downtown where a lot of young people study and sold a Militant subscription to a student who had bought other copies before at our street tables. We also received a subscription in the mail from a Cuba solidarity activist who lives outside Toronto.

Our recipe for success involves various activities like fighting to get back to those who have left us their names (they are often very busy people and hard to reach). We also try to actively participate in conferences and other political meetings. Several of the new subscribers and others interested in the socialist press came into contact with us at these events because we brought news of struggles that we were building solidarity for as union activists.

Why Fighting Workers And Farmers Need The `Militant'

"One thing I like about the Militant is that I get information from around the world that I don't get on ABC, CBS, or NBC. I'm able to get a different point of view from that of the capitalists. Without the Militant, I didn't know that it was Fidel Castro's internationalist fighters in Africa that helped to free Nelson Mandela. The Militant addresses issues for working-class people - the injustices done to labor and the strikes and boycotts that fight back. No working-class household should be without the Militant."

Eddie Slaughter

Vice President of Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Assoc.

Buena Vista, Georgia  
 
 
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