“The guy knew what he was talking about, since he had worked at the mine a while back,” Joe Swanson told the Militant October 26. Swanson had flown in from Des Moines, Iowa, to join a team of volunteers traveling across Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado to sell the socialist press at mine portals, on campuses, and in working-class communities.

One Co-op veteran and construction worker in Huntington told Swanson that the Co-op miners today “get paid 12 cents more than I did, and that was 30 years ago.” He took two back issues of the Militant and some subscription blanks to show to friends.

Over two weeks, the team sold 16 Militant subscriptions toward the international goal of 950 Militant subscriptions, 400 PM subscriptions, and 400 Pathfinder books to those who subscribe. While sales of Perspectiva Mundial are on schedule, book sales need to be stepped up, and international totals for the Militant are 5 percent behind where they should be at the halfway point of the eight-week drive.

Another group of volunteers carried out a similar effort in the Midwest on the weekend of October 18-19, selling 17 subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial and four to the Militant. Edwin Fruit reported from Des Moines that on October 18 teams “went to working-class neighborhoods in Sioux City, Iowa, and South Sioux City, Nebraska. In both, Militant supporters spoke to workers from the Tyson Foods beef cut-and-kill plant in Dakota City, Nebraska. Several said they expect the Tyson bosses to demand wage cuts and increases in health-care deductions as part of a new contract, due in August of next year.”

Similar demands by Tyson at its plant in Jefferson, Wisconsin, sparked a strike on February 28 by several hundred members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 538. The workers are still walking the picket lines today.

Team members got out the socialist publications in several Iowa cities the next day. UFCW members at a Tyson plant in Cherokee have been following the Wisconsin strike closely, said Fruit. The Militant supporters found themselves involved in wide-ranging discussions “covering the state of the unions today, the plight of family farmers, and whether supporting a so-called progressive Democrat in the 2004 elections to ‘defeat Bush’ is the way forward.”

On October 25, sales campaigners set up a number of literature tables at a Washington, D.C., protest against the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Romina Green reported that 27 people among the crowd of 10,000 bought Militant subscriptions, while participants also purchased $803 worth of Pathfinder books.

Following the protest, the Young Socialists and Socialist Workers Party sponsored an Open House. “The speakers were Olga Rodríguez, Socialist Workers Party candidate for city council in New York, and Bill Schmitt of the Young Socialists,” said John Hawkins, who helped organize the event. “Thirty-four people came. One young guy from Minnesota bought a copy of Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Unions by Jack Barnes along with his introductory Militant subscription.”

See subscription drive chart.  
 
 
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