Vol. 78/No. 14      April 14, 2014

The drive will run from April 5 to May 14 with the goal of winning 1,800 readers, and for as many of them as possible to take advantage of books on revolutionary, working-class politics offered to subscribers at a steeply discounted rate.

The effort to win subscribers and get some of them to join in expanding the paper’s circulation is strengthened by the Militant’s on-the-scene reports from Ukraine as well as by the recent publication of two new books on the fight to free the Cuban Five — I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived and Voices From Prison: The Cuban Five.

At opening events of watercolor exhibits of Antonio Guerrero, one of the Cuban Five, in Philadelphia and Chicago March 21, participants picked up 14 copies of I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived, 13 copies of Voices From Prison and four of The Cuban Five: Who They Are, Why They Were Framed, Why They Should Be Free, one of 11 books on special offer with a subscription (see ad below).

“I know people who think that with the Russian troops going into Ukraine, Marxism is reviving. But I see from the Militant that this is not true,” said Iyad Kouteich, who got an introductory subscription at the March 28 Montreal Militant Labor Forum.

Kouteich attended the forum along with a friend, who had met Militant supporters as they went door to door the previous weekend in his apartment building. Kouteich also bought the French-language edition of The Cuban Five and volunteered to help build the upcoming showing of Guerrero’s paintings in a Montreal café.

Michel Prairie, a leader of the Communist League in Canada, gave the presentation at the forum on “The Capitalist Crisis in West Africa and the Revolutionary Legacy of Thomas Sankara.” Sankara was leader of the 1983-87 popular revolution in the West African country of Burkina Faso.

Among 30 participants were five Burkinabès, who joined the discussion, describing what they had experienced in Burkina during and after the revolution.

On March 29 and 30, a team of Militant supporters from Seattle went to Arlington, Wash., a town just west of Oso, where extensive logging caused a mudslide March 22 that buried a whole community. Going door to door they talked to volunteers collecting food and supplies for displaced families and rescue workers.

“I think I would like this newspaper and the book of paintings too. Thank you for stopping by today,” Karee Damm, a food service worker who is also an artist, said as she got a subscription and a copy of I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived. The team signed up five new readers and sold 10 copies of the paper.

“Former President Viktor Yanukovych sent troops against the people. It is very bad now, but we can’t accept Russian troops controlling the country,” Halyna Sukhovinska, a house cleaner who is originally from Ukraine, told John Naubert March 30.

She was one of four new subscribers in an apartment complex with many Ukrainians, Russians and Moldovans in Renton, Wash., just south of Seattle.

“I’ve been fighting poverty my whole life,” said Henry Kuy, an assembly worker originally from Cambodia who lives in the same complex. Kuy decided to try out the Militant for 12 weeks and was excited to see the article about workers in Cambodia protesting for higher wages. “There was a rally recently at the Federal Building in Seattle,” he said. “I took my whole family to it. It was to let the world know that what Cambodian workers are going through is unfair. You have to fight.”

From San Francisco, Joel Britton reported that supporters there sold 13 subscriptions over the last 10 days, including at a March 29 protest of 500 against the March 21 cop killing of Alejandro Nieto, at a rally of 300 workers demanding increased minimum wage and at a vigil honoring the 100 people killed in February protests in Kiev, Ukraine.

“A March 22-23 team to the Central Valley signed up four new readers and got two renewals,” Britton said. “Several of these were to farmworkers. We also sold a subscription at a March 29 special showing of the new Cesar Chavez movie attended by 200 farmworkers.”

Join the campaign to expand the readership of the paper and of books on revolutionary working-class politics. Contact a distributor listed on page 8 or the Militant at (212) 244-4899.  
 
 
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