Vol. 76/No. 15      April 16, 2012

Communist workers and other supporters of the paper will use the campaign to distribute the paper broadly in the working class. A major component will be systematic selling door to door in working-class neighborhoods, with particular attention to areas where Black workers live. Militant distributors are currently discussing their local quotas, which will be printed in next week’s issue.

In three areas—Iowa, Illinois and Washington state —Socialist Workers Party election campaigns are well under way. Other party branches will launch campaigns in the coming weeks and the party nationally will launch its presidential ticket. The combination of subscription and socialist election campaigns will be used to present a revolutionary working-class road forward as workers confront the deepening crisis of capitalism and the efforts of the propertied rulers to foist the burden on our backs.

The coming subscription campaign builds on initial steps taken by branches of the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Leagues abroad to put this kind of steady weekly sales of the Militant and revolutionary books at the center of their political work.

Last week several worker correspondents from Atlanta, Miami and New York went to Sanford, Fla., in order to report on the ongoing protest against the lynching of Trayvon Martin and introduce the Militant and communist books to workers there.

In three days, they sold 164 copies of the socialist newsweekly, 31 subscriptions and 16 copies of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack Barnes, SWP national secretary. The book, about the dictatorship of capital and the road to the dictatorship of the working class in the U.S., is offered at a discount of $10 with a subscription. (See ad on this page.)

“Last week,” writes Chuck Guerra from Des Moines, Iowa, “SWP members sold 66 copies of the paper, 15 subscriptions and three copies of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power in areas of Des Moines with a high concentration of Blacks; at a rally to support striking members of Teamsters Local 371 at Nichols Aluminum in Davenport, Iowa; and at three different actions protesting the murder of Trayvon Martin.”

The Militant is a key weapon for building solidarity with ongoing labor battles against assaults by bosses and their government on our living and working conditions, basic rights and dignity.

John Naubert writes from Seattle that SWP members there sold 45 copies of the Militant, five subscriptions and four copies of the book while campaigning last week with Mary Martin, SWP candidate for Washington state governor.

While they were going door to door in Tacoma, Wash., after joining a protest for Trayvon Martin, says Naubert, “a student from Equatorial Guinea renewed his subscription to the socialist newsweekly and asked, ‘Do you have this book?’ pointing to the ad on the front page of the Militant for Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power. ‘I really liked the book How Far We Slaves Have Come [by Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro] that I got the last time I saw you.’”

John Steele writes from Montreal that at a March 31 demonstration of some 7,000 in solidarity with Steelworkers locked out by Rio Tinto Alcan in Alma, Quebec, members of the Communist League sold to the overwhelming French-speaking crowd 38 copies of the Militant and 13 books on revolutionary working-class politics in French, including eight copies of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning by Jack Barnes and three copies of Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs, who was a central leader of strike battles and union organizing drives in the 1930s in the Midwest and of the SWP.

“Two members of the Socialist Workers Party from Albuquerque, N.M., and Los Angeles traveled to Superior and Kearny, Ariz.,” writes Ellie García, “to discuss with copper miners Senate Bill 1054, which will extend time worked underground from eight to 12 hours. We sold 18 copies of the Militant as well as four subscriptions, including at the plant gate of the Asarco open pit mine.”

We urge interested readers to get a weekly bundle and join the effort to expand the circulation of the socialist newsweekly among workers. Contact a distributor near you, listed on page 8, or the Militant office (see page 2).

This column will run for the duration of the subscription drive. Send brief reports and photos on your sales experiences by 8:00 a.m. EDT every Tuesday, along with comments and quotes from new and renewing subscribers.
 
 
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