Thank you for helping make the seven-week effort to increase the Militant’s long-term readership a success.

Nearly 1,500 people subscribed during the campaign. Welcome! Almost 700 of them renewed or bought long-term subscriptions for the first time, with the rest getting introductory subs.

The effort got off the ground with the February 6 issue that featured the banner headline, “Unionize the mines! Build the UMWA! No miner has to die! Workers need a union to enforce safety.” We were responding to the bosses’ brutal drive for profits that had already killed 16 coal miners and two other mine workers at stone and gravel operations in January—a toll that rose in February to 24 in the United States and shot up with the deaths of 65 coal miners in Mexico before the end of the month.

Beginning the last week of January, thousands of working people showed their appreciation to the Militant for its tell-it-like-it-is reporting of their struggles and other questions of world politics. And for its editorial support to organizing and other labor battles. Nearly 20,000 copies of the February 6 special issue were distributed over the next six weeks among miners, garment and textile workers, meat packers, poultry workers, hotel cleaners, auto workers, and others.

More and more workers insisted the Militant voice their concerns and publicize the facts of their efforts to resist the onslaught of the bosses’ profit greed. We were honored to do that.

Some asked for help in extending solidarity—like the messages Phil Polsom, an officer of the union organizing potash miners in Canada, sent to miners in Mexico through the Militant.

Many workers, like the Rockspring miners in West Virginia, explained they needed the Militant available outside portals or other worksites because selling it as widely as possible would help their struggles for unionization.

A woman who bought the Militant and donated $3 to help its distribution told Tom Leonard in a working-class neighborhood of Houston, “It’s important to get the Militant around. Thousands of us think like what’s in that paper.” Hundreds of people—from dairy farmers to retired seamen and truck drivers—reacted the same way, not only renewing their subs but sending public endorsements to the paper to urge others to do the same.

New readers joined the effort, ordering bundles for the first time and taking quotas. This was especially true of the Young Socialists in Albany, New York; Detroit; and Tampa, Florida; all of whom made or surpassed their quotas.

A gain of the circulation effort, many distributors said, was acquiring the habit of meeting in person Militant subscribers, getting to know them, talking with them about politics, exchanging experiences, and convincing them to renew their subs in the process. While the final result of 692 renewals and long-term subs fell short of the initial projection of 1,000, the lessons learned about the method used have long-lasting value.

The cumulative fruits of this kind of outreach was captured in a note Linda Joyce from Charleston, West Virginia, sent March 13, the day the campaign ended. “On March 11, Tom Nichols and I attended the world premiere of the movie ‘Black Diamonds: Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice’ in South Charleston,” she wrote. “There were about 100 people there. The person who introduced the movie talked about the Militant in his welcoming remarks. He said the Militant had sent a reporter all the way from New York to West Virginia to cover the showing of the documentary on the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster, and he held up the issue with the article in it. He told everyone they could subscribe later, pointing to Tom and I, and saying we would be in the lobby. After the movie, seven people subscribed and we sold all the single copies we brought. Several thanked us for being here and also endorsed the Militant Fighting Fund.”

Joyce was referring to the fund-raising effort and public defense campaign of the Militant against a harassment lawsuit by Utah mine bosses (see article in this issue). Militant supporters integrated into the circulation work winning support for this campaign.

Over the next two weeks, and before the next sub drive starts, we urge you to help win another 200 endorsers to the Militant Fighting Fund to reach 500 new signers by March 31, the goal organizers of the defense effort have set.

Sincerely,
Argiris Malapanis, Editor
 
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