Vol. 76/No. 44      December 3, 2012

Clayton Bronson, a retired sugar worker from Drayton, N.D., adopted a goal of selling three subscriptions. He is one of 1,300 workers locked out by American Crystal Sugar since Aug. 1, 2011.

Bronson said he has been reading the weekly articles about expanding the reach of the paper and noticed there were new areas taking part in the campaign. He has already been showing the paper around to other locked-out workers.

Longime reader Horace Kerr asked that Denver be added to the campaign chart with a goal of five subscriptions.

We received our eighth “prisoners” subscription last week—a renewal from a reader behind bars in Pennsylvania that was mailed by his brother. (See box on Prisoners’ Fund on page 11.)

Kevin Cole, a 57-year-old postal worker from Anaheim, Calif., has sold two subscriptions to coworkers, one of whom bought all four books on special with a subscription.

Cole has sold the paper door to door on two recent occasions. “The door-to-door sales of the paper strengthens my resolve. It makes me bolder and hones my skills talking to workers about politics,” Cole said.

In September Cole started reading the Militant after buying a subscription at a Labor Day action in Wilmington, Calif.

“I’m not that well versed in the science of socialism, but I know that it is the only solution to capitalist dog-eat-dog competition,” Cole said. “That’s where the Militant fits in for me.”

Jesus Landeros, a 17-year-old high school student from Los Angeles has been selling the Militant regularly over the past six weeks. He urged other readers to circulate the paper in Lennox, a working-class area near the airport, resulting in 10 subscriptions being sold there. On two occasions friends of Landeros also joined the subscription effort.

“I like the door to door best,” said Landeros. “A lot of people are going through many of the problems we are talking about and want to share their experiences.”

“Oh, the Militant! I really like the Militant!” said Ash Khan, 17, a high school student at Murray Hill Academy in Manhattan when she saw the paper at a Nov. 16 protest against the assault on Gaza at the Israeli Consulate in New York. Khan had subscribed five weeks earlier when Militant readers knocked on her door in Upper Manhattan.

At the protest she took several subscription blanks to show to friends and introduced Militant distributor Brian Williams to a friend of hers who was at the demonstration. It turns out her friend had just subscribed at the action.

“I just sold a subscription to a student at Heritage University, which is on the Yakama Indian Reservation,” Robert Beal reported from Yakima, Wash.

This new reader “is politically active locally. He asked for three subscription blanks for friends who he believes will be interested in the literature.

“He also bought The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform Under Capitalism and Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power” with his subscription, two of the books on special, Beal added.

“As a Militant reader going door to door in diverse working-class neighborhoods in Yakima and other cities in eastern Washington, I see revolutionary working-class literature distribution as sharing a basic message, seven generations old, of united political struggle, clarifying the present and being embraced most strongly by young students and by workers,” Beal concluded.

Readers: if you haven’t yet, join the campaign!
 
 
Related articles:
Socialists from Nebraska and Iowa join weekend door-to-door effort to sell ‘Militant’ in Des Moines
Fall ‘Militant’ subscription campaign Oct. 13 – Dec. 16 (week 5) (chart)  
 
 
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