Vol. 77/No. 11      March 25, 2013

As the readership has expanded, so too have the number of readers taking part in the international subscription campaign.

“Going door to door with the Militant is a passion for me. It is a paper that tells about the struggles and strikes of workers, a paper that points out what working people can have when we unite,” said Juan Torres, from San Bruno, about 12 miles south of San Francisco.

Torres, who works as a cashier at McDonald’s, subscribed when Militant supporters knocked on his door last December. Since then, he has joined several times going door to door in working-class neighborhoods in the Bay Area.

“It’s a moral issue. The morals of the people who run this system come from money. It’s all about profit,” said Mark Wilson, 30, when Militant supporters knocked on his door in Peckham, a working-class area of South London.

Wilson was a train cleaner until over a year ago when the rail company he worked for ended permanent contracts. “I had the option of an agency contract, but the wage was lower and they couldn’t guarantee a 40-hour week.” He bought a single copy of the socialist newsweekly and asked for another discussion.

From Auckland, New Zealand, Patrick Brown writes that Militant supporters there “have been getting into deeper discussions that register the widening impact of unemployment and the squeeze on wages.”

“I’m looking everywhere for work—cleaning, anything—but had little luck. Just some work picking strawberries,” said Awa Sall when Brown knocked on her door in the district of Papatoetoe in South Auckland, March 7. Sall is originally from Mauritania, in West Africa.

Her husband, Ibrahima Sall, bought a subscription after seeing the recent articles on the war in Mali and coverage of the meeting at the Havana book fair on Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own. “Sankara’s my man,” he said when seeing books of speeches by Thomas Sankara that are on special with a subscription. (See ad below.)

Alycia Williams, who works for the Kent School District in Washington, bought a subscription and Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, wrote John Naubert from Seattle.

“I want to learn more about Malcolm’s ideas,” Williams said. “We have to do something about the system—like how it’s designed for the low income to be maintained in low income.”

“I was on a long distance call, but you said the magic word—socialist,” said Miriam Canales when she opened her door to Militant supporters in the Dyckman Houses apartment complex in Upper Manhattan, March 9.

Canales is a former teacher originally from Cuba. “You know why they made a socialist revolution there? Because something was not right,” she said.

Her husband, Ricardo Thoms, also born in Cuba, joined the discussion. He has worked for Con Edison for 27 years and was part of the fight by more than 8,000 members of Utility Workers Union Local 1-2 against a four-week lockout by the utility giant last summer.

Canales and Thoms bought a Militant subscription and the books Cuba and Angola and The Cuban Five: Who They Are, Why They Were Framed, Why They Should Be Free. The next day, they attended a special Militant Labor Forum on two other books on the Cuban Revolution. (See article on front page.)

In Washington, D.C., Militant supporters hit the streets March 10, campaigning for Paul Pederson, Socialist Workers Party candidate for D.C. City Council, in the Anacostia neighborhood.

Martin Stoute, a painter who does home improvement work and is originally from Dominica, was glad the SWP campaign defends the Cuban Revolution.

“When you see the situation in the Caribbean, the poverty, what you are saying is really important,” he told Pederson as he signed for a subscription.

“I come from a working-class family. I have worked in a factory and never dropped out from workers’ cause since then,” Julie Papineau said when she bought a subscription in the Montreal working-class neighborhood of Verdun March 9. Papineau is a municipal worker, member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 301.

Join the effort to expand the readership of the paper among working people. Call Militant distributors in your area. (See directory on page 6.) Or order a bundle at themilitant@mac.com or (212) 244-4899.
 
 
Related articles:
Winter ‘Militant’ campaign Feb. 9 – March 18 (week 4) (chart)
 
 
 
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