Vol. 75/No. 21      May 30, 2011

A number of workers buying subscriptions are also taking advantage of specials for books that help explain today’s capitalist crisis and the lessons of workers fighting for political power.

Rashid showed us his packed bookshelves and said he “loves to read.” Along with a subscription, he bought all the books available at discount prices: The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working Class Politics and the Trade Unions, Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, and The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning, all by Jack Barnes; and Is Socialist Revolution in the U.S. Possible? by Mary-Alice Waters.

Following are reports from Militant Army volunteers in other areas.
 

Martín Reyes, a restaurant worker and Militant subscriber for the past year, joined the campaign to sell subscriptions door to door in South San Jose, California. He picked the streets, mixed with working people of various nationalities. We sold two subscriptions in one hour, getting a sub at the first door we knocked on. Another team also sold two subscriptions.

Reyes got more and more comfortable as he saw the good response to the paper. He proposed doing it again next week. ¡Adelante!

—Carole Lesnick, San Francisco

Laura Nuñez, a high school student in the Los Angeles area, joined a Militant subscription team in Gardena this week. She helped win two new regular readers. “I really enjoyed it and was impressed with how comfortable people were discussing the issues the paper covers,” Nuñez said.

She said she hadn’t understood how deeply the economic crisis is affecting working people, especially unemployment. In every neighborhood we’ve visited, no matter the outward appearance of some houses, we’ve met workers being hammered by the crisis—running out of jobless benefits, facing big medical expenses, having homes foreclosed.

Discussions about what’s in the Militant help workers look at the bigger picture, rather than their personal situations, Nuñez said. You have to be ready to talk about all kinds of questions, she added, pointing to the example of a young guy born in Mexico who sees new immigrants as a problem.

“Would you like to go door to door again soon?” I asked Nuñez.

“Definitely,” she said.

—James Harris, Los Angeles

Militant Army volunteers in the United Kingdom sold six subscriptions to workers going door to door in Hull, in the northeast. Among them was Mrs. Needler, who showed Militant supporter Anita Östling newspaper clippings about the bombing of Hull in the Second World War. “We have to stop them from having another world war,” she said. “But then again there are wars taking place today. We have to stop them too.”

The same weekend six subscriptions and a copy of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics were sold in London by a team at a housing estate in Dagenham.

—Paul Davies, London