We are getting the magazines out on buses, impromptu tables during festival seminars, at the dormitories where participants are staying, and through a booth at the festival’s Friendship Fair. The magazines are among the most popular items at the Young Socialists stand. Some 15,000 youth from around the world are attending the festival.

A delegate from Mali bought the French-language Nouvelle International nos. 7 and 8, along with the Pathfinder pamphlet We Are Heirs of the World’s Revolutions by Thomas Sankara. He agreed with the argument presented in the title article of issue no. 8, “Our Politics Start with the World,” that access to electricity for economic development in nations oppressed by imperialism is a crucial question for the working people of the world.

Two Cuban doctors serving as internationalist volunteers in the Barrio Adentro medical program in the city of Maracay picked up the twin issues of the Spanish-language Nueva Internacional. They described the difficult living conditions facing Venezuelan workers and peasants they have witnessed, despite the fact that the country has a greater national average rate of electrification and industrial development than many other parts of Latin America. They said the struggle to narrow the economic and cultural gap between people in the imperialist countries and the semicolonial world is part of what they are fighting for too.

Many who bought the Marxist magazine were from Venezuela. Several were particularly interested in its analysis of the class struggle in the United States. Helen León, who coordinates the Mission Sucre literacy program in Tocoyito, a rural town in Carabobo state, subscribed to the Militant and bought Nueva Internacional 6 and 7 after a discussion on the union-organizing struggle by the Co-Op coal miners in Utah. Young socialists have so far sold more than half a dozen Militant subscriptions.

In addition, we have sold more than 80 books on revolutionary politics to delegates. Top sellers include 18 copies of titles on the Cuban Revolution, including 8 of Che Guevara Talks to Young People in Spanish; 10 books and pamphlets by Thomas Sankara, the central leader of the 1983-87 revolution in Burkina Faso; and 9 by Malcolm X. Also popular are The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning and Abortion Is a Woman’s Right, with 6 copies each.
 

UPDATE: On the morning of August 10, Militant correspondent Argiris Malapanis reported from Caracas: “I got a text message on my cell phone at 1:00 a.m. this morning from ólöf Andra Proppé saying the Young Socialists from Iceland sold another four NIs on the bus on the way to the villa.”

Later in the day, Malapanis phoned in a further update: “45 more people bought NIs, for a total of 116 sold at the festival as of today.”
 
 
Related articles:
15,000 at opening of world youth festival in Caracas, Venezuela
Click here to see the New International sales campaign scoreboard  
 
 
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