"We visited four mine portals in southern West Virginia this past week and received a warm response to the Militant, selling 56 copies," said Jeremy Rose in Pittsburgh. "We also sold several more papers and a Militant subscription when we went to workers’ homes in a few mining towns."

Rose reported that the sales team sold 16 papers at the Hobet mine and 19 more at the Marrowbone mine in Mingo county. Both are mountaintop removal mines. They also sold 20 papers at USX’s underground mine outside Pineville. "United Mine Workers members and contract mine workers alike enthusiastically welcomed the news of the union victories at the Northern States Beef plant in Omaha, Nebraska and the victory of miners at the Maple Creek mine in Pennsylvania," he said.

Socialist workers in other coal mining regions are also planning sales teams, among them a May 25–30 trip to the western coalfields in Colorado and other states. To help launch the coal team they are planning a Militant Labor Forum featuring a talk on the five Cuban revolutionaries who are held in U.S. prisons. Readers who are interested in participating in a coal team should contact the Militant.

After the fourth week of the drive participants in the campaign have sold 381 Militant subscriptions, 168 PM subscriptions, and 164 copies of Pathfinder’s Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by Jack Barnes. Below are reports highlighting sales activities in several areas. Drop us a line or two on sales results in your area for next week’s issue.

Workers snap up ‘PM’ at Levi’s plants
BROWNSVILLE, Texas--We sold the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial at the two Levi-Strauss plants in Brownsville and San Benito that are scheduled to close this August, tossing 1,100 people out of work. The Brownsville plant, which opened in 1972, is considered one of the highest-paying workplaces in the Rio Grande Valley. Levi’s began moving work out of the valley plants in 1999 as they shifted to a so-called "product-driven" organization. We sold five copies of PM at the Brownsville plant gate and several more going door-to-door in the neighborhood near the plant.

The team also campaigned for Socialist Workers candidate for Congress Anthony Dutrow with a literature table near the U.S.-Mexican border in downtown Brownsville. A woman who works in the Tyco maquiladora plant across the border in Matamoros, Mexico, bought a PM and a copy of the Spanish-language edition of Peru’s ‘Shining Path:’ Evolution of a Stalinist Sect by Martín Koppel, after a discussion with Dutrow on working-class politics in Latin America. Our sales totals here were 15 copies of PM, 10 copies of the Militant, 7 Pathfinder titles including Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, and one Militant subscription.

Striking chocolate workers buy ‘Militant’
HERSHEY, Pennsylvania--Last weekend Militant supporters from Brooklyn and the Garment District in New York joined distributors in the coal mining region of northeastern Pennsylvania to get the revolutionary press into the hands of fighting workers in the area. The teams went to the picket line of the 2,700 Hershey Chocolate workers who are on strike against the candy giant over the company’s demand to increase the amount union members pay for health insurance. Two strikers signed up for introductory subscriptions to the Militant and eight others purchased copies of the paper. Many workers expressed interest in the articles on the meat packers’ union-organizing victory in Omaha, Nebraska, and the victory of coal miners at Maple Creek Mining against the company’s union-busting drive.

Strikers at Hershey’s invited the Militant campaigners into their union hall where they proudly showed off their new food bank being put together with help from the carpenters and plumbers unions and food donations from workers at the nonunion Reese’s plant. Many say it could be a long fight against the candy maker. The AFL-CIO in the area is co-sponsoring a rally on to build solidarity with the strikers.

Partisans of the Militant also received a warm welcome from workers at the Hershey’s plant in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Although the workers in Hazleton are in a different union and are not on strike, many expressed support for their brothers and sisters on the picket line. Nine of them bought issues of the Militant at their afternoon shift change.

The team also sold a Perspectiva Mundial subscription in Hazleton, a mining town, to a Mexican-born worker at a literature table in front of the main Post Office. Two other workers in nearby Minersville purchased subscriptions to the Militant after meeting socialist workers who knocked on their doors to introduce the paper.

Sales at fund-raiser for Palestine
NEWARK, New Jersey--Two socialist workers attended an Emergency Fund-raising Dinner for Palestine here on May 11, which had been well publicized on campuses in the region. About 500 people attended, a large number of whom were young. We offered the Militant to people as they arrived, selling four subscriptions and a dozen copies of the paper. One of the new subscribers is a young woman, originally from Liberia, who had bought a copy of the paper at the April 20 rally in Washington that drew 75,000 people. She bought a subscription right away, and encouraged her friends to get the paper. We sat with her for part of the dinner and discussed a range of questions, from the Cuban Revolution to the role of U.S. imperialism in the world.

That same weekend campaigners sold a Militant subscription, a PM subscription, and two copies of Cuba and the Coming American Revolution on two tables in the working-class district where we are planning to relocate the Pathfinder bookstore. This was the final weekend of campaigning for Maurice Williams, the Socialist Workers candidate for mayor of Newark, and many people stopped to take campaign literature and learn about the working-class alternative to the big-business candidates.

Stephanie Taylor, Young Socialists member in Brownsville, Texas; Betsy Farley in eastern Pennsylvania; and Naomi Craine in Newark, New Jersey, contributed to this column.  
 
 
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