March 2008, NC report on Party and press building

Today I want to make five points about Party building, describe some of my own club’s recent activity, and then present some thoughts and proposals on building our press.

We have been talking about the role of our Party for quite a few years now, and I think we’re still struggling with it. But I also think most agree with what Sam has been stressing, and that is, that our role is -- as expressed in our strategic policy --- to build the movement against the extreme right. To which he adds that part of building that movement is building a bigger Communist contingent within it. This is not optional; it’s an integral part of fully playing our role.

And being part of that movement is the starting point for growing our organization. What do we mean by “the movement?” – it is those forces, organizations, sections of our people, that are coming together around the 2008 election battle.

That’s my first point – we have to be as fully involved, on the ground floor, at the grassroots, as we can be.

Transforming our Party
Second: we have characterized this political moment in our country’s history as transformational. So here’s the question: Is it possible for political life to be transformed, to undergo a leap forward, and for our Party to stay the same? I don’t think so. We will be transformed as well.

We need to look very concretely at this: how will our clubs participate in this struggle, and be transformed? How will our press be transformed? How will our use of, and presence on, the internet be transformed?

Sam pointed to the fact that we are already experiencing growth. In some places it’s modest; in others, a bit more dramatic.

But we all know that we still have a ways to go towards a situation of steady growth, and I’m not talking about growth in general, but rather, growth among people who are involved in struggle, in the movement around the elections, as well as growth of our clubs.

There is so much that is new, exciting, dramatic, in the interest and involvement of people in political life, that we have the potential for making a turn towards consistent, across-the-board growth.

So here’s the third point: there’s a caveat: just being active doesn’t build our clubs; Party growth isn’t “inevitable” and will take plenty of attention, effort and creativity.

We have to be immersed in what’s going on in a particular way. We have to be foot soldiers, and we have to get to know other foot soldiers. We have to talk to people. We have to get the PWW into their hands. And we have to find ways to talk to people about the Party.

Our clubs should be thinking about whether what they’re doing, talking about, planning, is relevant, interesting, to new friends and contacts. One example from my own club: in February, we quickly put together a Black History month house party sponsored by the PWW/NM, which Juan spoke at, on African American-Latino unity, the Obama campaign, the California primary, etc. Five people we’d met because of their interest and involvement in that campaign came to the event, and one bought a sub to the paper.

Fourth: We’ve said this many times before, and I’m going to say it again: the key to building well functioning local organization is good club leaders, who get support, attention and resources for their work.

If we haven’t already, we should consider shifting assignments, away from national and district level projects to the clubs. For the political potential of a club to be realized, we need more comrades who make it their priority. Just a small example: many clubs meet only once a month, which means only 7 meetings between now and the election. Leading comrades should plan on being at every one of those meetings, should plan other work around that, should be thinking about the club’s goals for that period and how they can help.

Fifth: we need to make concrete plans for the year ahead.

Over the next weeks, every club should have a discussion where they “get down to brass tacks” about plans for working on the election. We will be talking with district leaders and trying to help in every way we can.

In the first place, this means figuring out how to participate in the primary over the next two months. It means looking at local races, and should include an approach to voter registration, an obvious necessary ingredient for a landslide victory in November. Wherever possible, we should work with others in voter registration efforts as well as planning our own part, with concentration in the clubs’ area of responsibility.

Club plans should include either adding to or drawing up lists of people: of potential PWW readers, of people we’d like to bring closer to us and eventually recruit. It should include a list of people we’re going to ask for money. Not everyone fits in every category – and the potential subscriber list should be biggest and broadest, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Club plans should include thinking in new ways about how club meetings are conducted, who we’ll invite to them, how the educational discussions can relate to the work and fit the needs of new people we want to bring around. Are there new techniques we can utilize, for example, from the website? Again, with so few meetings between now and the end of the year, we should try to make special efforts to plan each one.

My own club’s experience over these last 3 months contains some examples of what’s new and what’s possible.

In January, we had an informal get together of friends and contacts to talk about the Obama candidacy. We invited people by email and a few with phone calls. 6 new people came to that. At that meeting two friends volunteered to sign up on the website to host future events. A house party was organized, and leafleting at the subway station.

20 people showed up at the house party, including four from our club, plus friends, neighbors, and others who’d seen the posting on the campaign website. We collected names and numbers, and made plans to continue to work on the campaign. In March, that same person hosted a call-in to Texas house party for their primary (through moveon.org). We brought members and friends to this as well.

I also signed up to participate in a “Latinos for Obama” car caravan the weekend before the primary, where I met a couple of new people. We put flyers under the doors of almost 1000 apartments in our neighborhood. On primary day, I took the day off to hand out flyers at my poll, talking with many people, and collecting the names and numbers of people interested in future work. We organized a trip to Philadelphia to register voters at the end of March, a great experience, lots of conversations and fun, and promises made to continue to work together.

All along we have been working closely with the people we’ve met, emailing back and forth about news and developments, exchanging ideas and reactions, etc. We’ve had conversations about McCain, about voter registration projects, about how to maintain unity after the primary is over. People have commented more than once about the important political and organizational contributions the Communists have made in the various meetings. We have forwarded PWW articles, and asked for subscriptions.

We’ve also been able to connect the people we’ve met in this work with other things we’re doing, including a local peace vigil on the 5th anniversary of the war and a strike support rally in the neighborhood.

I have described this in some detail just to give a sense of how what’s new – the high level of interest and involvement in politics, and new people – can become part of our regular functioning as Party clubs.

The People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo
Finally, some thoughts on building our press.

We have said that the PWW is the best tool we have – but best for what? I would say it’s the best tool for accomplishing two related, but also different, tasks:

One is to utilize the paper (including its online edition) as part of our strategic policy, namely, building the people’s movement against the right, and labor’s leading role within it. The paper is a voice of that movement, and as such, can and should have many more readers than it does.

The PWW is also the best tool we have for building the Party -- for gathering a circle of friends, neighbors, political co-workers, etc., with whom we have regular political contact. The paper gives a rounded and concrete representation of our politics. PWW readers can be brought to our events, contribute money, and of course, can be recruited into our organization. Over the coming year, we should focus on building up the readers around our clubs, and finding a variety of ways to bring them closer to the Party and our work on the election.

Today I want to focus more on the paper as a voice of the people’s movement, with a broader character and hence even bigger potential than the Party organization.

We have just finished with our subscription campaign, and first, we should congratulate ourselves on the success that getting 700 new subs in a relatively short period of time represents. It shows what can be done; it was a very good start to moving the membership towards seeing the paper’s potential.

But we also have to look at the problems in the sub drive, the biggest of which was that too few people participated in it. And I think part of the explanation for that is that over time, we have fallen into a narrow way of thinking about the paper. In practice, many comrades see the paper and the Party as the same – the problem being, that the reasons they hold back on asking people to Party events or to join become the same ones that hold them back from getting subscriptions and regular readers.

Now, let me be clear about what I’m saying, and it’s not that we should accept as insurmountable the obstacles, real or imagined, that keep people from joining the Party, not at all. What I am saying that if we don’t see the paper as having a very broad appeal, we will limit our use of it, and the tremendous potential it has for developing a much, much, much bigger readership.

And this will damage more than the size of our subscription base -- it will inhibit our ability to contribute to the developing movement, which needs this paper.

Going forward, we should find ways to transform our concept of, and use of, the paper in this direction. Though financial and staff constraints have forced a reduction in the print run, and availability of bundles, we should take this as an opportunity to turn a negative into a postive, and put a bigger proportion of our attention to increasing the subscriber base.

The most important point of all is that in this incredibly exciting election battle, we will have lots of opportunities to do so. In the next months, we should find every opportunity to make the case for the PWW as a must-read for everyone who is working to defeat the Republican right in November.

Where else will they get our take on the critical importance of the elections at this stage in the class struggle, where will they get the clarity we can offer on the many ideological issues and problems, our uniquely grounded but also optimistic attitude about the way to win? Where will they be able to read of the many ways and places that people are joining this struggle? What better source for those necessary ingredients of successful struggle – inspiration, encouragement, unity?

Proposals/concrete plans
The PWW/NM is grossly underutilized. I think it’s possible to have 10,000 subscribers, in the near future, if we focus. We need club and district to put together lists, of who they’ll ask to subscribe, to plan PWW events, to look anew at public advertising, special offers, routes, small bundles, etc. Dan is developing some proposals on these areas. If you haven’t checked out the weekly flyers (using PWW articles) we’ve been doing, you should – already 3 local areas have turned their own articles into flyers for insertion into the regular paper.

Nothing succeeds like success: we should put the next nine months on the shoulders of the past six.

-- Our aim is a much bigger readership and making PWW-building a regular, ongoing, aspect of the lives of every member, with an emphasis on subscriptions and small bundles;
-- Every club should discuss and settle on subscription goals for the rest of the year. The goals should be collectively arrived at and regularly monitored;
-- From the national office (Org. Dept and PWW Circulation), we will put more emphasis on support for club and district projects, phone-a-thons, materials, and develop new ways to promote the paper as the voice of the broader movement, with materials, special offer/promotional ideas, direct mailings, etc.

In this year ahead, let’s think big about our wonderful publication, and its role and potential in helping the developing movement.