Vol. 78/No. 23      June 16, 2014

Readers of the working-class newsweekly contributed more than $119,000, well over the international goal of $115,000, to help cover the operating expenses of the paper and field reporting teams around the world.

This victory is a good send-off to the reporting team of worker correspondents John Studer and Frank Forrestal who are returning to Ukraine to cover the struggles of working people there. They will also visit the area hit by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion, which prompted the revolutionary government of Cuba to respond with a medical aid program that was both unparalleled in the world and continues today.

“Coverage of Ukraine is outstanding! Nothing comparable anywhere else!” a reader in Tucson, Arizona, wrote in a note he sent in with a $50 contribution.

“Reaching out with the paper a Ukrainian worker led us to a Ukrainian church, helped us get a subscription for the church and kicked in a contribution,” said Dean Hazlewood, fund organizer in Miami.

Militant supporters there are using the advances made in the subscription and fund campaigns to reach out to readers, inviting them to the Active Workers Conference in Oberlin, Ohio, June 19-21.

“Six International Longshoremen’s Association members contributed to the fund,” Hazlewood said. “Several are long-time subscribers, who we met at plant-gate sales on the docks in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. We are meeting with two of them to see if they would like to participate in the conference.”

“The last couple of weeks, it wasn’t a given we were going to make the goal,” said Alyson Kennedy, Chicago’s fund organizer. “We reached out to subscribers and got a good response. Some people raised their pledge, some even doubled it. A lot of people really liked the first-hand coverage from Ukraine. They see the value of their contributions, the value of the reporting trip,” she said.

Not everyone was happy with the Militant’s views on developments in Ukraine, said Kennedy. “One subscriber called in an agitated state, disagreeing with the defense of the country’s sovereignty.”

Several of Kennedy’s co-workers contributed to the fund. So did a long-time subscriber, who was part of a 14-month lockout in 2010-2011 at Honeywell’s uranium processing plant in Metropolis, Illinois, that was covered and supported by the Militant.

“In the final stretch we stepped up our efforts to make the goal and in the last week we raised more than $3,000,” said Deborah Liatos, organizer of the effort in New York. “We organized to get in touch with long-term subscribers, getting to know them better. By the end we had over 100 contributors. ”

A few areas didn’t make their quota.

“We took too large a goal, depended too much on one or two people who in the past had given large contributions,” said Tom Fiske in Twin Cities.

“We approached the fund drive routinely, and didn’t reach out to a broad enough layer of long-term readers in a timely and effective way,” said Mary Martin in Seattle.

Again, a big thanks to all contributors. You make it possible to get the Militant, the voice of the working class, to readers like you worldwide.
 
 
Related articles:
Militant Fighting Fund April 5 – May 27 final chart (chart)
 
 
 
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