Thousands of workers, farmers, and youth have picked up copies of the Militant the last four weeks. The greater political receptivity to the paper indicates that this is the best opportunity in years to increase its long-term readership. Let’s turn the single-copy sales into subscriptions.

We urge you to join an international campaign over the next two months to sell at least 1,500 subscriptions to the paper, and possibly hundreds more.

The increased interest in the Militant registers a shift in the political situation in the United States. Workers and farmers are resisting the cumulative consequences of the relentless offensive by the bosses on the living and working conditions of millions in the United States and around the world. When the employers push, working people tend to push back rather than hunch down, more often than not. As they fight, because they have no choice, working people become hungrier for answers to understand the world today.

In the first two days of the circulation drive—which started September 17 and runs through November 13, the weekend after the U.S. elections—Militant supporters sold nearly 100 subscriptions, along with more than 500 copies of the paper. Strikers at Northwest Airlines, other workers at airports, machinists on strike against Boeing, farmers affected by the social disaster along the Gulf Coast, coal miners, and auto workers were among those who subscribed. These working people liked the Militant’s accurate coverage of labor struggles and its editorial support for them, as well as its explanation of major developments in politics around the world.  
 
Why subscribe?
Subscribing allows readers to follow over time how fellow workers confront similar conditions and other news and analysis that helps chart a course of action pointing a road forward for humanity—a road out of the dog-eat-dog reality of capitalism. Getting the paper regularly allows individuals to read serialized features week after week, such as the article on the fight for Puerto Rican independence during World War II in the centerspread of this issue. When someone subscribes, the paper gets to their home, where relatives, friends, or co-workers may see it and get interested too.

“Many of the farmers and workers we talked to were looking for an answer to why what happened [on the Gulf Coast] happened and continues to happen,” said Erek Slater, 26. He is a recent college graduate from Chicago who traveled by train to Jackson, Mississippi, to join a Militant reporting and sales team to talk to farmers affected by the results of Hurricane Katrina.

The four people on the Mississippi team sold seven subscriptions to the Militant and 16 copies in two days. In addition to subscribing, one farmer also purchased The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning. This pamphlet is offered to new Militant readers at a special price of $1 along with a subscription. Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, another book published by Pathfinder Press, is also offered for just $5 with a subscription. In addition, issues 12 and 13 of the Marxist magazine New International can be purchased together with an introductory subscription for $25 (see front-page ad).

Slater was one of the 17,000 delegates to the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students that took place in August in Caracas, Venezuela. “Those who participated in the youth festival in Caracas, and got a glimpse of the class struggle in Venezuela, will now have a chance through the subscription campaign to join working-class struggles we see breaking out in this country,” said Rebecca Williamson, a young socialist in Minnesota and the Socialist Workers Party candidate for St. Paul School Board.

“The tension in the class struggle and the increased receptivity to the Militant among working people makes it possible to build a communist youth organization oriented to the struggles of workers and farmers,” said Williamson, who is also a meat packer and member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789. “More youth are interested in joining the YS now—way beyond those who went to Caracas—than we have seen in a while. A couple have joined in the Twin Cities the last few weeks.”  
 
Recruitment to Young Socialists
“We sold six subscriptions and 58 papers to members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union in Windsor, Ontario, at a contract vote meeting today,” said Marshall Lambie September 18. YS members from Detroit and Toronto joined the effort to sell the Militant at the meeting of CAW Local 200, which ratified a concession contract with Ford.

In the course of the subscription drive, Young Socialists leaders will be traveling around the country to organize special regional efforts to sell Militant subscriptions across the United States; speak at public meetings; build support for Socialist Workers Party (SWP) state and local elections campaigns; intervene in political debates such as the U.S. tour of UK member of parliament and middle-class radical George Galloway; and participate with the Militant and YS banners in the September 24 antiwar demonstration in Washington D.C., and other protest activities.

SWP leaders on tours working with party branches to help strengthen trade union and other mass work of the party are joining local efforts to sell subscriptions too.

Many supporters of the Militant will join the discussion on how to organize tens of millions of workers in the United States—nearly 90 percent of whom are not unionized—at the national convention of the Change to Win Coalition, set for September 27 in St. Louis to found a new labor federation (see article on page 3).

At that gathering, partisans of the Militant will sell subscriptions to the paper. They will also collaborate with other unionists in expanding labor support for the Militant Fighting Fund. A growing number of union officers and individual unionists have been endorsing the Militant’s fight to defeat a retaliatory suit by Utah mine bosses stemming from the paper’s consistent coverage and editorial support for the Co-Op miners’ struggle in Utah to win representation by the United Mine Workers of America (see article on this page).

Anyone interested in joining a Militant sales team should contact the Young Socialists at youngsocialists1@verizon.net or distributors of the Militant at the nearest location (see directory). And any reader who would like a bundle to distribute on their own and use it to sell subscriptions to co-workers, relatives, and friends can contact the Militant.

In solidarity,

Jacob Perasso
Olympia Newton
Róger Calero
 
 
Related articles:
Teamsters organize truckers in Miami
Open hiring hall for independent owner-drivers
Back truckers' organizing drive! {Editorial}
Major U.S. unions to found new labor federation focused on organizing
Strikers rally as Northwest files for bankruptcy
Airline caterers reach out in UK, U.S. as they fight for reinstatement
Big business worried about Boeing in strike
New Orleans: workers coming home face lack of basic services
Mississippi farmers begin to rebuild after hurricane  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home