Vol. 76/No. 42      November 19, 2012

“I would like to renew my subscription and make a contribution to the Prisoners’ Fund,” a reader behind bars in Florida wrote on his check to the Militant office. His was the third “prisoners” subscription on the campaign chart, either sent by prisoners or sold to other working people they know outside. The goal of five such subscriptions is well within reach.

The fund makes it possible for inmates to order subscriptions at a reduced rate of $6 for six months. Half-year subscriptions are also offered free of charge for those who have no means to pay.

Militant subscriber Kenneth Davidson invited distributors Jacquie Henderson and Michael Fitzsimmons from Houston to meet fellow Black rights activists Isaac Wynn and James Smith in Palestine, Texas, last weekend before going door to door. Davidson is the local president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

At the end of a wide-ranging one-hour discussion at a local restaurant, Wynn bought a subscription to the Militant and a copy of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. This book is one of four offered at reduced price with a subscription. (See ad on this page.)

When Davidson, Fitzsimmons and Henderson later knocked on the door of Fabiola Rodriguez, she wanted to talk about the ways U.S. immigration laws are used to victimize and intimidate immigrant workers.

She got a subscription to the paper, along with copies of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning and The Cuban Five: Who They Are, Why They Were Framed, Why They Should Be Free—two other books offered at reduced prices with a subscription.

By the end of the afternoon, the three Militant volunteers had sold four subscriptions and six books on revolutionary working-class politics. “This was a great experience. I want you to come back and we will go with more people to more areas of town,” Davidson told Henderson and Fitzsimmons.

“I really thought we did great,” said Militant reader Nichele Fulmore, a UPS driver and Teamster member from Lumberton, N.C. She joined three volunteers who traveled from Atlanta Nov. 3 to introduce the socialist newsweekly to residents of a trailer park there.

Among the workers they talked to were many from the Smithfield plant in nearby Tar Heel, N.C., the largest slaughterhouse in the world. A 15-year-long battle to win representation with the United Food and Commercial Workers union concluded with a victory in 2008.

In all, five subscriptions, six single copies and three books were sold.

“The Militant keeps you in contact with the movement of the working class around the world. It’s a movement we have to follow to organize a struggle against the injustices of the capitalist system,” letter carrier and Militant reader Yves Delva told John Steele, a distributor of the paper in Montreal.

Delva is a shop steward in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. He bought his first subscription to the paper last July along with a copy of the Workers Power book at a postal workers’ demonstration against Post Canada’s drive to increase productivity through speedup. He recently renewed his subscription for a year.

After listening to an appeal at a recent Militant Labor Forum for help in circulating the Militant, Delva volunteered to take some copies of the paper and subscription cards to his union meeting the next day.

John Naubert from Seattle wrote that Militant supporters there sold 17 subscriptions to the paper last week, along with four books at reduced prices.

In Ellensburg, Seattle supporters teamed up with Militant reader Robert Beal from Yakima, setting up a table of the Socialist Workers campaign at the student union at Central Washington State University. In the course of a few hours, they sold four subscriptions to the Militant along with two books at reduced prices.

One of the new subscribers was student Megan Epperson. “I need to know what’s happening in my world,” she said, as she bought a copy of Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution. She returned about one hour later to say how excited she was about the book after starting to read it.

Join the campaign! You can order a weekly bundle of the paper or subscription blanks any time at themilitant@mac.com or (212) 244-4899.

Please keep sending your reports, comments, quotes and photos by 9 a.m. EST every Monday.
 
 
Related articles:
Fall ‘Militant’ subscription campaign Oct. 13 – Dec. 16 (week 3) (chart)  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home