The efforts of Militant supporters in Des Moines have put them on top of the chart this week--the first in the eight-week international subscription drive that began April 5, and will run through June 1.

"At a regional conference of the National Lawyers Guild held at Drake University April 11–12, four people signed up for the $10 introductory subscription to the Militant," Fruit said. "The theme of the conference was the war at home and the war abroad, and one of the featured speakers was Róger Calero, the Perspectiva Mundial editor who is fighting the government’s attempts to deport him."

Supporters have sold subscriptions and books to participants in the weekly Militant Labor Forum, and off literature tables at an April 5 antiwar rally, in a workers district in Des Moines, and at a college campus, Fruit said.

Supporters elsewhere in the Midwest have set the pace in the effort to win new long-term readers among meatpacking workers. In Cleveland and the Twin Cities, meat packers have bought a total of five Militant and four Perspectiva Mundial subscriptions. A worker in a Cleveland plant also bought one of the books featured in the campaign. These include several issues of New International and Capitalism’s World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium, by Jack Barnes (see ad on page 15).

Through consistent work and follow-up, meat packers in Atlanta sold a Perspectiva Mundial subscription to a poultry worker in Gainsville, Georgia. "A while back he checked out our literature table on a trip to north Atlanta," reported Arlene Rubinstein. "Then he attended the public meeting here addressed by Róger Calero. This week he bought the subscription when we traveled to Gainsville on a regional trip."  
 
Hunger for explanations
Rubinstein and another socialist worker at an Atlanta meatpacking plant have stepped up their Militant sales on the job. One new buyer is "a young man from Somalia who is very interested in the paper’s explanations about political events," she said.

Sara Lobman from Newark, New Jersey, encountered a similar hunger for political explanations from a protester at the April 12 antiwar rally in Washington, D.C. (see article on page 14.) As he subscribed, "He told us that he had felt unable to thoroughly explain what was behind the war," Lobman said.

Campaigners need to set a steady pace throughout the drive’s two months. The weekly rhythm of sales at factory gates, in working-class districts, and on college campuses, will be punctuated with literature tables at political events--along with special efforts to sell to soldiers, and to working people in areas where there is no regular distributor for the revolutionary press.

Local organizers are also reminded that to be included in the weekly chart, subscriptions and book sales reports must arrive into the Militant office by 8 a.m. EST each Monday. We encourage you to send reports and photographs of sales teams at work.

See this week’s subscription drive chart  
 
 
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