Vol. 77/No. 47      December 30, 2013

Supporters around the world are celebrating a resounding victory in the drive. Many areas did like Des Moines and kept going until the last hours taking us 475 subscriptions over our goal of 2,500.

“Andrew Pulley, a Militant supporter and cab driver, had a group of seven Angolan oil workers as passengers for four days last week,” Trowe said. “They are mechanics taking training classes at a local compression company here. Pulley brought them to the book center. One of them got a subscription and three bought Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own.”

This book is one of nine on special offer with a subscription. Hundreds of the books have been sold since the beginning of the drive. (See ad below.)

“We were working right through Tuesday night. It was a big boost to have comrades join us from Twin Cities, Chicago and Des Moines on Saturday,” reported Jacquie Henderson from Omaha, Neb. “We also had a great dinner and social that raised contributions for the SWP Party-Building Fund.”

“Workers in the U.S. are so busy working, so they hardly have time to read and think. How can we help them understand what is happening in the world?” Antonio Jimenez in Columbus, Neb., asked Henderson when he renewed his subscription and contributed to the fund. “I am a welder and I work six days a week, every week. But I know I can’t be without this paper.”

Henderson invited him to join them in winning more readers. Jimenez took them to some apartment houses in this small industrial city surrounded by rich farmland and jumped into the discussions at workers’ doors. One restaurant worker got excited about a Militant article on the victory of striking garment workers in Cambodia and signed up for a six-month subscription.

“There was slavery in the U.S.,” Jimenez said. “It took the Civil War and more to get rid of it. But now we have a new kind of slavery, wage slavery. And it will take another revolution to end that. That is what we need.”

Jimenez asked the Militant supporters to come back so they could knock on some more doors together.

On Dec. 13 and 14, Susan LaMont and Dave Ferguson from Atlanta drove to Memphis, Tenn., to visit the picket line of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 252G members locked out by Kellogg.

“Nine workers subscribed to the Militant,” LaMont wrote. “This means 17 union members are now getting the paper.

“One worker, Marvin Rush, said he wants to buy Teamster Rebellion,” LaMont said. “He was fascinated by the story of how members of Teamsters Local 574 organized the unemployed, a women’s auxiliary and got help from farmers in their battle in the 1930s to make Minneapolis a union town.”

Erendira Valadez renewed her subscription during the drive after several years of not getting the paper, Arlene Rubinstein wrote from Los Angeles. Since then, the garment worker has attended two Militant Labor Forums, including this past week on the political legacy of Nelson Mandela.

“I see the forums as a time and a place where I transform my understanding of politics, and where I can feel comfortable to discuss my situation as a worker,” Valadez said. Supporters of the Militant there are meeting with a number of new readers to discuss their ideas on topics for upcoming forum programs.

Seth Galinsky reported that in New York door-to-door teams signed up eight new readers in the evening of Dec. 17, bringing the total to 447. Militant supporters there sold 69 over the final week.

Peter Thierjung and Deborah Liatos met a postal worker going door to door two weeks ago. They pointed to the article about how Metro-North’s disdain for safety in order to maximize profits had led to the commuter train derailment Dec. 1 that caused four deaths and over 60 injuries. “Come in here!” she said. “I’m getting that paper.” She had been injured on the job and the company fought all the way against her disability claim. She lost and was forced into retirement.

“Then her niece walked in,” Thierjung said. “She used to be a teacher. ‘Tell them why you are not a teacher any more,’ her aunt said. So the niece tells us she doesn’t want to ‘turn out any more worker-bees,’ she’s fed up with teaching. She grabbed The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning booklet out of our hands.”

“Come back next week. We’ll do a coffee and sit down and talk,” the postal worker said. “And be sure to bring the books.”

Thierjung and Liatos went back last Sunday. After talking politics for an hour, she decided to get Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power and Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution and asked them to come back with more books.

Supporters in New York have sold 166 books on special offer so far and are still counting. Topping the list are The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning with 38 copies, Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power with 34 and The Cuban Five: Who They Are, Why They Were Framed, Why They Should Be Free with 31.

“I enjoy receiving the paper,” wrote a worker behind bars in Virginia with his renewal slip. “When I get my conviction overturned, I look forward to having my case on the front page.”

Subscriptions to prisoners are at the very top of the scoreboard. Fourteen new inmates have subscribed and 11 have renewed. This is the highest number in years.
 
 
Related article:
Fall ‘Militant’ subscription campaign Oct. 12 – Dec. 17 (final) (chart)
 
 
 
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