“A workmate signed up to subscribe to the Militant last week,” reported Ron Poulson, a socialist worker in the packing room of a ham and salami plant in Sydney, Australia. “A discussion we had on women’s rights clinched it for him. He took a look at the coverage of the massive demonstration defending abortion rights in Washington, D.C., and said, ‘I thought women in America and Australia had already won all their rights.’ He’s from Tamil Nadu in southern India, and was quite interested to read the coverage of this political development in the United States.
“He told me he would take some time to read the coverage on the moves by Tel Aviv against the Palestinian struggle,” Poulson added. “He wants to discuss this more.”
Supporters of the Militant in Australia have sold eight subs to meat packers and members of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union, close to their goal of 10.
Efforts like these have brought the spring subscription campaign within inches of victory on the Militant goal in the final week. As of week seven, 1,876 subscriptions have been sold, only 124 shy of the international target.
Special efforts are needed to close the gap on the goal of selling 600 subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial, the Militant’s Spanish-language sister magazine—166 more subscriptions are needed to hit the mark. Socialist workers in U.S. packinghouses who have already sold nearly 120 PM subscriptions can made a difference here, as can socialists in the garment and textile industry.
Joanne Kuniansky, who works in a packinghouse in Sydney, reports that some of the new subscribers have gotten involved with the socialist movement there. “Anna, a workmate of mine, helped out during the Communist League election campaign at the end of March. She signed up to subscribe and has since joined us at the May Day march in Wollongong and protest actions against police brutality.”
Another co-worker of Kuniansky’s who got his first subscription during the drive, Sasha, has helped set up a new computer in the Communist League hall in Sydney.
In New Zealand, Militant supporters from around the country participated in the 20,000-strong march on May 5 in Wellington to defend the land rights of the Maori people (see back-page article).
“We set up a literature table on the parliament grounds at the end of the march,” said Terry Coggan. “In spite of driving wind and rain, we sold four subscriptions and 50 single copies of the Militant, before the weather forced us to shut down the table.”
“We set up a table at Victoria University in Wellington the next day, and sold another five subscriptions along with several books,” Coggan said.
Supporters of the paper in the Twin Cities need just one sub to meet their goal.
“We had a steady flow of people coming up to our table all day at the Cinco de Mayo celebration here in St. Paul,” wrote Bob Sorenson from St. Paul, in a note accompanying 10 Militant subscriptions. “This year we paid for a booth and we had a wonderful location between the U.S. Army and the George Bush booth. We had a big sign, in English and Spanish, ‘U.S. Out of Iraq!’ Seven people signed up to subscribe to the Militant and two to Perspectiva Mundial.”
At Garden Manor Farms, a packinghouse in the Hunts Point meat market in the Bronx, three workers who helped bring in the union at that plant in a victorious May 4 certification election have signed up to subscribe. The third subscription there was clinched when a worker who subscribes to the paper highlighted the Militant’s coverage of other labor struggles.
“I was showing the paper to one of the workers when a recent subscriber in the plant came up to us,” reported Samantha Kolhoff, a meat packer at another Hunts Point plant. “When I mentioned the union victory at Point Blank Body Armor in Florida, the subscriber said he had read the article already. ‘The boss called the workers snakes,’ he said, ‘but in fact it was the bosses who were the snakes.’ So the other worker decided he would subscribe as well.”
See sales drive chart
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