Thank you for helping make the Militant’s fall circulation campaign a success!
Some 2,500 people subscribed, including 573 who renewed their subscriptions or signed up for the first time as long-term readers. To all these readers: Welcome!
A feature of the subscription drive was maintaining and expanding the Militant’s readership in the working class in the cities where distributors of the paper are based and beyond.
A turning point in the campaign, which had started to lag midway, was the response by Militant readers to distribute widely the October 23 issue featuring a statement by the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party with the headline, “U.S. Hands Off Korea! No to sanctions, acts of piracy! Withdraw all U.S. troops and weapons.”
The coverage in that and subsequent issues found a hearing among thousands of working people and others, including Koreans and other Asian Americans.
The last three weeks of the drive coincided with the final stretch of campaigning for the Socialist Workers Party candidates in the U.S. midterm elections. During this period, supporters of the paper won the most readers, improving their record each week: 262, 305, and 464 the last week of the drive.
Another feature of the sub drive was participation by Young Socialists in more areas around the country. YS organizers in Albany, New York; Tampa, Florida; and Detroit made or went over their quotas. Those in Amherst, Massachusetts, and San Diego were just a few shy of their targets.
Below are excerpts from notes Militant campaigners sent that show the kind of work they carried out.
“Three of us from Houston went to Tyler, Texas, today to bring solidarity and sell the Militant to Steelworkers on strike against Goodyear,” Steve Warshell wrote in November 2. “On the way to Tyler, we stopped at the entrance to a Goodyear chemical plant in Beaumont where 12 workers bought the Militant. Then we went to Angelina College in Lufkin, where we sold five subscriptions. We met an organizer of the immigrant rights action that mobilized 11,000 people there on May Day. He invited Amanda Ulman, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, to come speak before his organization. Now we are headed to Tyler to meet with the strikers. Stay tuned.”
“We extended every effort to make our quota in the last two weeks of the drive,” Gregg Schmidt reported from Tampa. “We set up tables at the University of South Florida campus, sold at the entrance to the Smithfield meatpacking plant in Plant City, and introduced people to the paper at shopping areas in the Black and Latino neighborhoods of Dade City. We got a great response to the Militant’s stance for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of imperialist troops from Iraq.”
“Together with Young Socialist Marshall Lambie from Detroit, supporters of the Militant in Iceland sold 6 subscriptions, 37 single issues, 2 books, and 3 pamphlets in a two-day effort,” wrote Ögmundur Jónsson from Reykjavik. “We got four of the six subscriptions by setting up appointments, in some cases sitting down for a political discussion over coffee or tea.
“A worker who subscribed last week came to our book center on Wednesday,” Jónsson continued. “He appreciated the revolutionary books on display.
“’You have too many books,’ he said jokingly. ‘I can’t choose between them.’ He started with Thomas Sankara Speaks.”
Sincerely,
Argiris Malapanis
Editor
Click here to see the Militant sales goals chart