Vol. 76/No. 47      December 24, 2012

As we go into the final days of the drive, the Militant editor announced the paper will count all subscriptions received by the Christmas holiday weekend. The final campaign scoreboard will be printed in the following issue.

Four subscriptions were received last week from workers behind bars, three from the U.S. and one from New Zealand, bringing the total to 14 and blasting over a goal we increased twice.

“Militant distributors here never had results anything like this before,” Jacquie Henderson writes from Houston. “We sold 34 subscriptions last week. This includes 22 going door to door in working-class areas.

“Sixteen of the door-to-door subscriptions were sold during the weekend alone,” Henderson adds, “along with three copies of books offered at reduced prices with a subscription to the paper.” (See ad below.)

Militant distributors in Houston also sold five renewals and three new subscriptions to picketing strikers outside the Pioneer Flour Mill in San Antonio. Members of Teamsters Local 657 have been on strike since April 2011 against an attempt by the company to jack up their health care costs.

According to John Naubert, Militant distributors in Seattle sold 20 subscriptions to the paper last week, including 15 going door to door.

One of them was to Darcy Lelary-Bignayan. “I’m pro-union. We need fair wages,” she said. “My mother grew up in Thailand and we were very poor. A lot of people have lost their voices. That’s why I am signing up for the Militant.”

Lelary-Bignayan also bought a copy of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party.

“Militant readers sold 16 subscriptions and one Workers Power book last weekend, knocking on doors inside several high rise apartment buildings in a Black working-class neighborhood on the Southside,” Alyson Kennedy writes from Chicago.

Robert Beal, a rangeland erosion laborer, dropped a note to the Militant from Yakima, Wash., saying that he sold a subscription and a copy of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning to Jaime Villanueva as he was going door to door in rural Toppenish, Wash. Villanueva is a house builder on the Yakima Reservation.

“In 2008 I sometimes worked for $5 an hour just to save my house and land,” Villanueva said. “I nearly lost everything and couldn’t get back up. I need to stay informed on current events in the world and why things happen.”

At the Hyundai-Rotem railcar factory in Philadelphia, George Chalmers reports that shop steward and longtime subscriber Ivan McNeil took a stack of Militant subscription blanks, telling coworkers that the paper informs “about what’s really going on.” As a result of his pitch and the Militant’s coverage of workers’ struggles in China, two coworkers decided to subscribe.

“This week,” Joanne Kuniansky wrote from Sydney, Australia, “Justine McCarthy, a longtime subscriber, sent in four subscriptions she decided to get for interested friends as Christmas presents, responding to the call for readers to help expand who gets the Militant.”

The international effort to expand the readership of the socialist newsweekly among working people will continue long beyond the current drive.

You can order a bundle of the paper or subscription blanks at themilitant@mac.com or (212) 244-4899.
 
 
Related articles:
Fall ‘Militant’ subscription campaign Oct. 13 – Dec. 16 (week 8) (chart)  
 
 
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