“The most important thing I like about the magazine is that it covers news about the world, not just the United States. I’ve been reading about Venezuela and the coal strike in Utah. When you read about the miners it helps us to understand how other workers are fighting for their rights. I think Perspectiva Mundial should be read by other workers at the plant. We need to keep ourselves informed.”

As the eight-week subscription drive enters its fourth week, Militant supporters around the world report interest in the two periodicals in workplaces and at factory gates and mine portals. On the Militant, with 795 subscriptions, the drive is just ahead of pace at 40 percent of the goal. Sales of Perspectiva Mundial stand at 197 subscriptions, 28 behind schedule to make the goal of 600.

Campaigners are planning a nine-day target week starting Saturday, April 17. The week of intensified sales —including teams to campuses, towns, and factories in regions outside sellers’ home cities—will culminate in the April 25 march on Washington as well as days of action in Canada to defend a woman’s right to choose.

After a strong start to the campaign, Chicago partisans of the Militant upped their goal from 80 to 100. Here are a few highlights from the third week of their campaign.

At an April 7 University of Illinois protest against antiabortion rightist Joseph Scheidler, the Militant drew interest from a number of protesters, reports Maurice Williams. “Two workers at a nearby historical museum stopped to talk to us and look over the literature we brought. One of them, Don, said to me, ‘I’ve always liked Malcolm X,’ as he selected two books of Malcolm’s speeches.”

He told Williams, “I would like to go to the march to defend abortion rights, but I can’t.”

“I am going to the march,” said his co-worker, Donna. “It’ll be my first big demonstration.” She bought a subscription and The Long View of History by George Novack.

“The Militant! I haven’t seen it in years. That paper helped me to keep my sanity all the time I was locked away!” a former prisoner told Williams at a street table.

Pointing to a book of speeches by Maurice Bishop, the leader of the Grenadian Revolution, he said that Pathfinder books had helped him to maintain his perspective during the 28 years he spent behind bars. “Let me know what I can do to help,” he said, signing up for a Militant subscription.

In London, the socialist weekly got a warm response at an April 4 protest outside the Belmarsh high-security prison against the detention there without trial or charges of 13 foreign-born men branded by police as “terrorists.” At the action, immigrants from the Spanish regions of Catalonia and the Basque country picked up copies of the paper and one subscribed, expressing appreciation for its coverage of struggles for national self-determination in Spain. Several Moroccans at the protest passed the paper around after seeing an article with photos and information about the heroic struggles in northern Morocco against Spanish and French colonial rule in the 1920s.

Sales like these have prompted Militant supporters in London to raise their goal from 40 to 50. Campaigners in Washington, D.C., have also increased their goal, bringing the total of local goals to 1927. We still need raises in local goals to reach the international target of 2,000.

See sales drive chart  
 
 
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