This is a challenge. Throughout the first 10 weeks of the campaign, we’ve averaged nearly 180 Militant and 40 PM subscriptions per week.
A concerted, all-out effort is now needed to meet the goals.
An important factor in the success of the campaign will be sales to fellow workers on the job, at plant gates and picket lines, as well as to other unionists. The “In the Unions” section of the chart shows that there is substantial ground to cover to reach the goals that socialist workers in the mines, meatpacking plants, and garment and textile factories have set for themselves.
“We have two weeks left in the drive. Let’s take advantage of every day to campaign,” wrote Tom Fiske, a meat packer in Minneapolis in a November 9 letter to socialist meat packers. “This is what we said at the beginning of the subscription campaign and this is how we should conclude it. We should meet and map out plans to take advantage of the opportunities we have. And carry out a real campaign effort for the remaining days of this drive.”
“Discussions with co-workers about the meaning of the U.S. elections can be effective in winning new subscribers,” he continued. “One socialist reported from Des Moines that such a discussion on the job led to a worker at the Tyson plant in Perry, Iowa, subscribing to the Militant. I was able to sell two PM subs on the job at another plant in Minneapolis through similar discussions.”
Fiske also said that using the coverage in both publications on the Co-Op miners’ union organizing struggle in Utah and the strike by workers at Quality Meat Packers in Toronto, as part of organizing solidarity with these fights, will net new subscribers.
Partisans of the Militant in a number of cities are also taking advantage of the momentum from the Socialist Workers Party election campaign to set up campus meetings and reach out to those they met before November 2 as well as new students.
Follow through from election campaign
“We got a call from a student at Sarah Lawrence College, where Arrin Hawkins spoke, telling us that a number of students were ‘stressed out’ about the election and wanted to hear what the socialists had to say,” said Dan Fein, the director of the New York SWP 2004 campaign. Hawkins, the SWP vice-presidential candidate, addressed students on that campus October 21, along with Martín Koppel, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in New York.
“Another student, who recently finished school at the state university in Albany, met our candidates during a campaign visit upstate and is planning to come down and join us for street campaigning this weekend,” Fein added. “We have also received invitations to set up tables at the student center at the Borough of Manhattan Community College where Róger Calero, our presidential candidate, spoke during his campaign tour here.”
Fein reported that socialists in New York are joining the debates and discussions coming out of the elections and getting back to those they met during the election campaign. Many signed up for subscriptions during the campaign and follow closely the coverage in the paper on the outcome.
Jim Spaul, a campaigner in London, reported that participants in the effort there have already made their goal of selling 50 Militant subscriptions. A highlight of last week’s effort there was a special round of calls to subscribers whose subs had run out a year ago.
“After a year, we drop the names of subscribers whose subs have expired,” Spaul reported. “We had a list of year-old subscribers and decided to call them up before erasing the names from the list. We got four renewals that way.”
Spaul said that the bulk of subscriptions sold in London were off of literature tables in shopping districts and working-class communities. “We also have sold a total of 16 subs to people stopping by the book shop—six in the last week alone,” he said.
Campaigners should send reports to the Militant on their activities in the final two weeks of the drive along with any photos that can be used along with this column.
Fall Militant/Perspectiva Mundial Fall Subscription Drive chart (week 9)