Joining in demonstrations like the rally in Savannah and responding to political developments will help boost the subscription effort. This week partisans of the Militant launched a target week as part of the subscription drive. They are making special efforts to distribute the paper with the feature article, "Washington's Cold War against Cuba: a historical perspective," by Mary-Alice Waters. Waters presented the talk at a conference, "Ending the Cold War with Cuba," held at Yale University. Also of interest to fighting workers is a report on a meeting of socialists who work in meatpacking plants and are deeply involved in the growing struggles of workers in that industry.  
 
Connects workers around the world
Reports in the Militant this week from Omaha, Nebraska, and Boston on union organizing drives by packinghouse workers; on the strike of transit workers in Los Angeles; protests by farmers; in defense of immigrant rights; and many more, point out the importance of the socialist newsweekly. The paper connects workers and farmers across the United States and indeed around the world. It helps those entering into struggle to see the possibilities of reaching out and broadening the fight, and the reasons for continuing to do so once the immediate strike or protest is over.

By reading the Militant, vanguard fighters more easily see the underlying weaknesses of the bosses and the government, as well as allies in unexpected places. The paper plays an important role in helping to dispel the lies and prejudices that underpin the divisions among working people fostered by the employers and the capitalist system.

This applies equally to the pamphlet The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform Under Capitalism by Jack Barnes. The results so far from the efforts of workers and Young Socialists show the importance of campaigning with a pamphlet and introducing a working-class perspective on central issues in U.S. and world politics to hundreds of people. Militant partisans in every city are encouraged to review their goals for selling the pamphlet. The overall goal will be increased next week to reflect the success of this aspect of the drive.

Socialist workers who work in the garment and textile industries, meatpacking plants, and coal mines are organizing to win new subscribers among as many co-workers, fellow union members, and other fighting workers and farmers as possible. For example, supporters in eastern Pennsylvania are planning a team to reach out to the 2,000 coal miners in that region. They will also visit college campuses in the area.

In Morristown, New Jersey, business owners and local politicians have launched a campaign against immigrant workers who gather near a train station seeking construction and landscaping work from contractors who hire casual laborers. The Morristown city council tabled a resolution that would have banned this arrangement.

"We set up a literature table in the downtown area with signs in Spanish and English saying 'Equal rights for immigrants' and 'U.S. Navy out of Vieques,'" said Mary Nell Bockman from Newark, New Jersey. "All of the workers we spoke to knew about the attack on the two Mexican workers by racist thugs in Farmingville, New York, and the protests against this violence. A restaurant worker from El Salvador who had been one of these day laborers came by the table and purchased a PM subscription. He said, 'I understand what they're going through and I want to do something to help their fight.'" The team sold 10 copies of Perspectiva Mundial, 4 PM subscriptions, 1 Militant sub, 6 copies of the pamphlet The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform Under Capitalism, and several other Pathfinder titles.

In Los Angeles, where 4,400 transit workers have been on strike, "the union held a mass meeting October 4 of 3,000 to 4,000 workers," said Elizabeth Lariscy. "One worker I spotted at the meeting was a Latino bus driver to whom I had sold a paper and a Pathfinder catalog while he was on the picket line. He told me, 'I looked up your web site and it looked really nice.' He bought the subscription right there on the spot."

The goal of the target week is to get the circulation drive on or ahead of schedule. Now is the best time to step up the pace in reaching out with the socialist press to ensure successfully completing the subscription campaign. Setting up street tables and going door-to-door in working class neighborhoods are an essential part of every drive.