Vol. 78/No. 28      August 4, 2014

As part of a team going door to door in Montreal’s east end July 20, John Steele met Luc Godin. It turned out he had a subscription a couple of years ago but had let it lapse. “It’s good to get another point of view that’s not in the traditional media and the other side of the coin,” Godin, who works in a print shop, told Steele as he renewed. “I want to help the movement of people who are victims of the employers’ attacks and are fighting for more equality and justice.”

Godin also bought the French-language edition of The Cuban Five: Who The Are, Why They Were Framed, Why They Should Be Free, one of 11 books on special discount for subscribers (see ad on page 3).

Socialist workers from the West Coast participated in the July 19-23 NAACP convention in Las Vegas and took time to go door to door there. Bjorn Borg, a worker at a warehouse that supplies the casinos, bought a subscription from Kevin Cole and Eric Simpson.

“Borg told us his health insurance had been switched on him, and wasn’t happy about it,” Simpson said. “He thought maybe I got better wages coming from San Francisco. But it isn’t true. Working people from coast to coast are being hit hard by downward pressure on wages.”

Construction worker Manuel Aguilar went with Mike Fitzsimmons, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Texas, to campaign door to door July 19 in a trailer park on the north side of Houston where Aguilar lives. Aguilar subscribed to the Militant in May and this was his first time selling the paper.

“We need more unity among workers,” said Griselda Bautista, a sewer in an upholstery and curtain factory who bought an introductory subscription.

“It’s the struggles of working people worldwide that you’ll be able to read about in the Militant every week,” Aguilar said.

Supporters of the paper in New York had a great week.

Dan Fein, Socialist Workers Party candidate for lieutenant governor in New York, joined other supporters of the socialist weekly to talk with Long Island Rail Road workers attending July 16 union meetings in Massapequa, Long Island. Workers from eight unions had gathered to hear the status of negotiations with the Metropolitan Transport Authority. MTA and union officials later announced they had agreed on a contract.

Seventy-one workers bought copies of the paper, four subscribed and two bought books on special: Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power and The Changing Face of U.S. Politics.

Craig Honts reported that the next day several of his LIRR co-workers were passing the Militant around in the breakroom. “Several expressed amazement at the 200,000-strong metal workers strike in South Africa,” Honts said, referring to a main headline in that issue.

On July 20, two Militant supporters sold three subscriptions and five books in the Staten Island neighborhood where New York cops killed Eric Garner with a chokehold July 17.

That same day members of the Socialist Workers Party and other readers of the socialist paper set up a booth at the annual Grenada Day festival in Brooklyn. Nineteen signed up for subscriptions and 15 got single issues of the Militant. Twelve copies of Maurice Bishop Speaks and 11 of New International no. 6, which features the article “The Second Assassination of Maurice Bishop” by Steve Clark, were sold along with 16 other books. Bishop was the central leader of the New Jewel Movement and the 1979-83 revolution in the Caribbean island of Grenada.

“I told members of the party about the festival last year but they weren’t able to get there,” said Militant subscriber Shirelynn George, who was active in the Grenada Revolution as a youth. “I knew we would get a good response. A lot of people bought the Bishop books for their children. They said they want them to know what happened with the revolution.”

“I wasn’t expecting to see a booth displaying books on the international situation,” said Allison Mathlin, a roofer who subscribed to the Militant and bought the two Bishop books. “I was impressed to see books with a left, progressive and anti-imperialist outlook.”

“In Grenada you can’t find books of Maurice in the bookstores, only in the museums,” said Mathlin, who was a founding member of the New Jewel Movement. “You are keeping the movement alive.”

Members of the Socialist Workers Party joined demonstrations across the country protesting the Israeli assault on Gaza. Seventeen copies of the Militant were sold both at the July 18 action in Minneapolis and at a similar protest in New York the next day.

See page 8 to contact the distributor nearest you if you would like to help expand the readership of the Militant or contact the Militant directly at 212-244-4899 or via email at themilitant@mac.com.  
 
 
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