We still have 93 Militant and 59 Perspectiva Mundial subscriptions, and 187 copies of Cuba and the Coming American Revolution to go. Young socialists and socialist workers are seizing every opportunity to get the two papers into the hands of workers and youth on the job, in working-class neighborhoods, and from literature tables. The last week of the circulation effort is also a good time to follow up on individuals who expressed interest in the paper, to bring home the final subscriptions in the drive.
A big push is needed in sales to unionists whom socialists have targeted in the campaign. In the United States, Militant supporters in the United Mine Workers of America are leading the way, and those in the United Food and Commercial Workers union registered a 22 percent increase in their sales this week.
The article below points to the opportunities to expand our readership among industrial workers through sales efforts at plant gates where socialists work. In several cases, socialists who work inside the plants have joined the teams, netting subscriptions.
On June 29, one team traveled to Rochelle, a small town an hour and a half west of Chicago. They sold one Perspectiva Mundial subscription at Rochelle Foods, a Hormel-owned meatpacking plant, where workers waged a militant and successful strike a little over a year ago. They sold another subscription to Perspectiva Mundial and the Militant going door-to-door in the area.
A second team went to Navistar’s International Truck and Engine plant in Melrose Park just west of Chicago to sell to members of the United Auto Workers. "Buy the Militant, Read about Navistar strike in Canada," read a sign carried by one person. Five workers, some of whom had not heard about the strike in Chatham, Ontario, bought copies of the Militant before Navistar security ordered the team to leave the roadside area where they were selling, claiming it was company property. Team members will return soon and sell nearby.
On July 1, socialists participated in a "National Protest to Demand Immigrant Rights," organized as the main activity on the last day of the convention of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). Two thousand ACORN activists, joined by members of the Service Employees International Union and others, marched from the Federal Building in downtown Chicago to the State of Illinois Building demanding "General Amnesty Now!" for immigrant workers, "Drivers Licenses for All," and "Stop the ‘no match’ letters from Social Security!"
Summer school participants met and spoke with two members of the Union de Braceros Mexicanos. León Esiquiel, worked in Indiana starting in 1944 as a maintenance of way worker for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Fidelio Vizarra, said that he picked tomatoes from 1959 to 1961. Both came to the action supporting the campaign to win moneys owed to the thousands of temporary contract workers who were part of this U.S.-Mexican program that started during World War II and ended in 1964.
Fifteen demonstrators picked up copies of the Militant and two bought subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial.
Several weeks ago Connie Allen, who works at Pillowtex, held a backyard barbecue. She sold a copy of Cuba and the Coming American Revolution and a Militant subscription to a co-worker there and they discussed the lies the U.S. government spreads about the Cuban Revolution.
Socialists have sold more than a dozen copies of the Militant to workers near the entrance of the Pillowtex plant 6 in Concord. Some workers have given their phone numbers to Militant supporters to further discuss the articles in the paper.
Students have purchased dozens of papers, some Pathfinder books, and Militant subscriptions on two campuses, Central Piedmont Community College and the University of North Carolina. On June 29 a UNC Charlotte student who had bought a copy of the Militant several weeks ago and signed up on a Militant Labor Forum mailing list, came to a forum after receiving an e-mail invitation. He brought with him a friend from Brandeis College near Boston who is visiting for the summer. The UNC student participated in the forum discussion, stayed for an hour afterwards to talk more, and bought a Militant subscription. He said it was a pleasure to be able to talk with people who think about political questions the same way he does.
This week a restaurant worker bought a subscription to Perspectiva Mundial and a copy of Cuba and the Coming American Revolution. Militant supporters selling the socialist press door-to-door visited him three weeks ago. He said he had just paid the rent and was tight on cash. But his eyes lit up when he looked at the Pathfinder titles in Spanish that the team had with them and he asked that they return in two weeks. The team returned, but he asked them to come a week later. On the third visit he purchased the subscription and a book and asked for a return visit to get more books.
Supporters of the socialist press reached out to farmworkers and other working people largely from Mexico who live in and around the town of Willard in northwest Ohio. They set up a table with communist literature in a commercial district in town with signs in support of immigrant rights, union fights, the Palestinian struggle and the Cuban Revolution.
Several passersby bought copies of Perspectiva Mundial. One worker who lives in one of the large farmworker settlements thought he would be in the area for about six months, so he purchased a subscription for that long.
A worker at a nonunion mine in northeastern Pennsylvania got a subscription after meeting with socialists for an hour and a half.
In Craig a young airport worker came into the bookstore and bought a subscription to the paper, a copy of Capitalism’s World Disorder, and another book. He had been in the bookstore before, but had been out of the area for awhile fighting the forest fires in another region of the state.
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