The Militant sub drive coincides with the first phase of a five-month campaign to sell issues 12 and 13 of New International, which have also been published in Spanish. NI no. 12 features “Their Transformation and Ours,” the Socialist Workers Party draft political resolution that is being discussed by SWP branches and organizing committees during a preconvention discussion period leading up to the party’s June 9-11 convention at Oberlin College in Ohio. The resolution is published along with “Capitalism’s Long Hot Winter Has Begun” by SWP national secretary Jack Barnes, the main article in that issue. NI no. 13 features “Our Politics Start With the World,” also by Barnes. (See New International ad.)

Classes to study the contents of the two issues are taking place across the United States and other countries, in conjunction with the sales campaign. Quotas that supporters of the magazine have so far adopted in local areas for the five-month effort total 2,172. Sales of the two issues in the week since the NI sales campaign was launched at a March 26 public meeting in New York has reached 362 copies.

As we go to press, the Militant has also received a total of 108 subscriptions to the Militant and its Spanish-language sister publication Perspectiva Mundial that were sold the first weekend of the drive—a good start.

In Des Moines, Iowa, two sales teams visited the nearby towns of Perry and Marshalltown to talk with workers who have recently been fired or felt compelled to quit their jobs after receiving “no-match” letters from the bosses at large slaughterhouses there. These letters are aimed at intimidating foreign-born workers by implying their Social Security numbers are not valid for employment.

The Iowa effort “got off to a modest start by selling three Militant subs and one Nueva Internacional,” said Joe Swanson from Des Moines. “One sub was sold to a high school student in Perry, Iowa. Another team went to a Latino grocery store in Des Moines and sold two Militant subs.”

A special regional sales effort is being hosted in Des Moines for socialists in the region over the April 9-10 weekend. “Next weekend, we will return to those towns and other towns in the area to talk to workers about the latest attacks on our class and what working people are doing to resist,” Swanson said. “This will be the first of a number of organizing efforts in the Midwest over the next seven weeks leading us to learn about other developments in the class struggle.”

Partisans of the Militant in New Zealand got out over the weekend to sell the paper to garment workers, members of the Engineers Union, and university students, Patrick Brown reported from Auckland. “Our team began its work in the early morning outside a factory that makes business suits for men,” Brown said. “On their way into the factory, six workers stopped and bought copies of the Militant.

“From there we went to a stop-work meeting called by the Engineers Union, which organizes a range of factories in the city. The meeting built support for the union’s campaign for a wage increase of 5 percent. Of the thousands of workers who went by us on their way into the meeting, around a dozen bought the paper, handing the money through their car windows as a line of cars built up behind them.”

Along with three subscriptions to the Militant, socialists in New Zealand sold 22 copies of the two new issues of New International. “Most buyers were long-time readers of the magazine,” Brown said, “but not all fit that category. Among the newer readers were two people who bought a copy as part of a package with introductory subscriptions to the Militant.”

Participants at two conferences in the Washington, D.C., area bought 10 subscriptions to the Militant over the April 2-3 weekend and 12 copies of the two new issues of New International. At the Women of Color and Allies Summit in Arlington, Virginia, six participants subscribed to the socialist newsweekly. At the Mid-Atlantic Region Women’s Studies Association Conference in Rockville, Maryland, four Militant subscriptions and five copies of the new magazines were purchased.

“I want to learn more about Marxism and socialism,” said Ana Ahuja, a Montgomery College student attending the Maryland conference. Ahuja picked up a subscription to the Militant and a copy of both new issues of New International, along with five other books published by Pathfinder Press: Feminism and the Marxist Movement, Cosmetics, Fashions and the Exploitation of Women, Abortion is a Woman’s Right, Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle, and Malcolm X Talks to Young People.

The sales efforts are being increasingly combined with campaigning for SWP candidates—from New York to New Jersey and Minnesota.

Click here to see the subscription drive scoreboard
Click here to see the New International sales campaign scoreboard
See link for New International sales offer.