The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 76/No. 22      June 4, 2012

 
3 weeks to go in subscription
drive–knock it out of the park!
(front page)
 
BY LOUIS MARTIN  
With just three weeks to go in the international campaign to expand the readership of the Militant among working people, 1,521 people have signed up, putting the drive right on target with no room for slowing down.

Local quotas are still 32 shy of the overall goal of 2,400. Are there any areas with the élan and confidence to close the gap?

“I know the Militant!” This is how Ross Williams, a stevedore, or wharfie as they are called in Australia, greeted a Communist League member going door to door May 20 in Greystanes, a working-class suburb in western Sydney.

Williams has worked for several years at Patrick Port Botany, a ship and container facility where he has from time to time bought single copies of the paper. This time he decided to subscribe.

Halfway around the globe, Rita Agyari, a Ghanaian-born nurse, engaged in a discussion with Communist League members going door to door in the Moss Side working-class neighborhood of Manchester, England, about how agency [temporary] workers are treated at the hospital where she works.

“At the NHS [National Health Service] agency I work for, if you come to work, you’re guaranteed a day’s pay,” she said. “That’s how it should be everywhere, but it isn’t. With other agencies, they can just send you home.”

Agyari bought a subscription to the paper along with a copy of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, one of two books by Jack Barnes offered at reduced prices during the campaign. The other is The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform Under Capitalism. (See ad on this page.)

That same day another new reader, Vu Lam, a factory welder in Lincoln, Neb., commented upon seeing the article “Profit System Drives Growing Joblessness, Boss Offensive” on the front page of last week’s issue. “Yes, today it’s all about more work and less pay for workers.”

Lam was introduced to the paper by socialist workers Maura DeLuca and Joe Swanson who were selling door to door in his neighborhood. He bought a subscription to the paper and a copy of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning.

The day before, DeLuca and Swanson attended a celebration of the birthday of revolutionary leader Malcolm X at the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation in Omaha, Neb., where they set up a table with revolutionary literature.

Ten participants bought Militant subscriptions, seven with a copy of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power. A new reader who had subscribed the week before also bought the book as part of the special offer.

“The paper is pro-truth and explains the superficial divisions among workers,” said Robert Penn, a heavy equipment construction worker as he was buying his subscription.
 
 
Related articles:
Spring ‘Militant’ subscription campaign April 14 – June 10 (week 5) (chart)  
 
 
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