We encourage every reader of the Militant to join in the last week of the circulation drive, which ends November 21. The Militant will be accepting subscriptions until the end of the day to count toward local goals adopted by supporters of the paper around the world. Using every day between now and then will make a difference in meeting the international goals.

The Militant has been explaining that regardless of the election’s outcome, big-business politicians Albert Gore and George Bush plan to advance the interests of the bourgeois class and will take as their starting point how to deepen the bipartisan assault on the social wage and democratic rights of workers and farmers, as pointed out in The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning by Jack Barnes. The pamphlet notes how Bush and Gore are champions of the death penalty and other weapons of class terror, including cops on the street, and prison guards, who have killed thousands of working people over the past decade.

The U.S. rulers are laying the groundwork for sharper confrontations with the working class and its allies among exploited farmers and others. But they face a growing problem with the increasing resistance among the toilers that is bringing together a vanguard of workers across the country who are receptive to revolutionary ideas, are beginning to read more widely, and broaden their scope. Pathfinder’s newest pamphlet is aimed at these militants and the youth who are attracted to their proletarian course.

Partisans of the socialist press have stepped up sales of this new title in several areas. "We had a good day of sales last Sunday, selling 11 pamphlets, four of them with subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial at a new location we tried out for the first time," wrote Seth Galinsky. He said they also sold a Militant subscription in the area, where they are deepening their political roots in the workers district where the Upper Manhattan Pathfinder Bookstore is located.

"A young construction worker from the Dominican Republic who lives in the Bronx bought the special deal offered by Pathfinder of $1 for the pamphlet with a PM subscription. He asked us if we organized any classes on the books we sell that he could attend," Galinsky added.

In New York’s Garment District socialist workers and members of the Young Socialists set up three literature tables. They sold three PM subscriptions, one subscription to the Militant, and several Pathfinder titles. "Later that afternoon we held a class on The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning," said Patrick O’Neill. "Two workers we met at the tables came to our meeting hall. One was carrying a pamphlet he purchased off a table we had set up some time earlier. They joined us in a lively, serious class, which also included two workers from Long Island who are involved in an ongoing fight to defend immigrant workers’ right to work in the face of right-wing violence."  
 
Sales teams to coal mining towns
The Militant receives a good hearing in the coalfields and coal mining towns. This is where a social movement exists to defend federally guaranteed health-care benefits won through decades of union battles, as well as where workers face devastation of whole areas by the coal companies and attacks by the bosses on the United Mine Workers of America. "We sold a pamphlet with a subscription to the Militant in Gillespie, a mining town in central Illinois where we have sent a sales team for the past two weeks," wrote Marty Ressler. "One miner told us when he bought the Militant, ‘I really enjoy reading this paper.’"

In Birmingham, Alabama, Susan LaMont, a garment worker, wrote, "Earlier this week, a leader of the Alabama Black Lung Association bought a subscription to the Militant after explaining to members at their November meeting what a useful paper it was in terms of coverage of the black lung fight and other issues affecting miners directly."

She said Militant campaigners in Alabama received a boost after sending a team door-to-door in Sumiton, a small community northwest of Birmingham where coal miners live and shop. "Five people bought copies of the Militant and we plan to follow up on those who told us to call them back this week."

LaMont said another team went to Hueytown, a small town west of Birmingham where coal miners, steelworkers, and other industrial workers live. "After selling two copies of the paper, that team then went to sell at Drummond’s big Shoal Creek mine on the Black Warrior River. Although it was Veteran’s Day and there was only a small crew working, one of the few miners who came out pulled over and stopped to talk to those on the sales team. After looking at the Militant article on the recent Black Lung Association meeting in Beckley, West Virginia, he decided to subscribe on the spot. He told them about his local union’s participation in the May 17 miners’ demonstration of 8,000 people in Washington, as well as activities around Camp Solidarity during the hard-fought miners’ strike against Pittston Coal Co. more than a decade ago."

"Next weekend we will be traveling to Natchez, Mississippi, to visit with strikers at Titan Tire and will have a class on the pamphlet with two strikers we know."

Socialists in Des Moines are driving to make all their local quotas and "plan to go over as much as we can to help the international campaign make all the goals," said Joe Swanson. "This week we sold subscriptions in Omaha, Nebraska, a plant gate in Marshalltown, Iowa, at a meatpacking plant in Perry, Iowa, and in Des Moines."

He said they have planned a number of political activities to recruit workers and expand the readership of the paper. Edwin Fruit, a socialist who works at a meatpacking plant in Perry, reported that one of his co-workers wants to attend a class on the Pathfinder book The Changing Face of U.S. Politics."  
 
 
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