First Published: Unity, Vol. 2, No. 10, May 18-31, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
UNITY is happy to announce that we have successfully completed our fund raising campaign. We raised $154,218, surpassing the goal set last November of raising $150,000 by May 1.
The vast majority of money raised has come from small donations and from fund raising events organized by UNITY supporters. Many workers, students, community people, and other progressive supporters donated money to us. We especially appreciate this support during this time of great inflation.
People are all struggling to make ends meet but still dug into their pockets to support UNITY. We even received donations from prisoners – who, perhaps, among all of us have the least money of all.
In February, we summed up some of the creative ways that people raised funds and combined fund raising with political work. Selling Marxist-Leninist literature on campuses, organizing cultural events, and selling dinners during factory breaks were some of the ways that UNITY supporters raised money. At the same time, they helped advance the mass movement and expand UNITY’S presence and distribution among the masses.
Raising $150,000 hasn’t been without struggle. For many League members and UNITY supporters, it has been a struggle to see fund raising in a political manner – to understand its importance, rely on the masses, and combine fund raising with mass work.
Why is fund raising so important? To put it simply, we can’t put out UNITY without money. In fact, to put out the kind of paper we want – one that is timely, professional in its quality, and with living connections with the masses – is extremely costly.
UNITY’S operating expenses are very high, and climbing. One factor is inflation. The cost of paper, equipment and services have all gone up. But another reason is that UNITY has grown. We’ve had a tremendous expansion since we started publishing last September and since we went bi-weekly last November. This expansion has meant higher costs. More subscriptions (see sum up of subscription drive, this page) mean higher mailing costs. UNITY’S prisoner network has grown, and we continue our policy of free subscriptions and literature to all prisoners. We are establishing more distributors around the country. Getting the paper to them as quickly as possible adds to our shipping costs. We are also establishing many more UNITY correspondents throughout the U.S. Getting timely news and UNITY photographs from them quickly means higher telephone bills and shipping costs. We are also constantly struggling to improve UNITY’S design and appearance, which takes more funds.
Much of the money our readers helped raise has already gone into meeting our operating expenses over the last months. Now, we will also be able to take up additional projects and expansion. In the next few months we will be publishing more UNITY pamphlets, such as the seven-part series on studying the theory of three worlds printed in UNITY.
We are also happy to announce that beginning in June, UNITY will be expanding to 28 pages in both the English/Spanish and English/Chinese editions. This will mean an additional two pages in English, two pages in Spanish and two in Chinese. This will enable us to have more coverage of news and features in all areas – national news, labor news, oppressed nationality struggles, student and youth movement and international news. We will be able to give more space to cultural reviews, and features and longer articles with more in-depth analysis. We have wanted to expand our pages for quite some time, and now we will be able to do so, in large part because of the successful fund raising campaign.
The first UNITY subscription drive has hit its mark. We have successfully tripled our subscriptions since the drive began in September 1978! This greatly expands our stable readership and boosts the paper’s circulation to a new high point.
The sub drive has been successful in reaching Marxist-Leninists and other revolutionaries as well as a broad mass readership. With the momentum of the merger of IWK and ATM to form the League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L) and the recent unity with Seize the Time and East Wind collectives, many more Marxist-Leninists have started reading and subscribing to UNITY. A large number of subscriptions were solicited at mass events and from new readers of all nationalities and backgrounds. We also received a big response from prisoners, and carried out a special prisoners subscription drive by mail during January this year.
The great majority of subs were solicited by literally hundreds of UNITY organizers through their day-to-day mass work, in spite of inexperience in carrying out a sub drive, their hard work and ingenuity enabled us to exceed our goal in only eight months’ time.
There are many outstanding examples we’d like to share with you. For instance, students at some campuses made a push to sell subs not only to other students, but to teachers and school libraries. On the East Coast, UNITY received many new subs from Dominican and Puerto Rican activists, many of whom read mainly the Spanish edition. In one Midwest steel mill, a UNITY supporter stapled subscription blanks to the papers he distributes to coworkers inside the plant. Almost all these workers filled out the blanks right away, saying that they wanted to subscribe and get every issue of UNITY. And in one city, UNITY supporters sold over 70 new subs in just two weeks!
These are some of the best examples of taking up the sub drive by really integrating it with ongoing struggles and mass work. This is where UNITY’S readers come from.