alanjjohnstone
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When I publicise an event taking place and suggest some action to involve ourselves, I am usually reminded that we have so few volunteers to undertake such simple campaigning as turning up at them
I would suggest that your proposal should coincide any party get-together with some national protest or demonstration and there are usually a number that we can target. An upcoming one is
https://globalclimatestrike.net/
But despite plenty of advance notice, we have left things rather late as usual.
We should do what we do for our own annual conference and ADM, provide accommodation at HO for non-Londoners and provide meals. Also reimburse bus or train fares. We need to get members to Londonand that is no longer easy considering age and health.
I am a pessimist…with justification… when some suggestions I make are never even responded to.
I have repeatedly advised the Party to acquire an outdoor projector, for instance. They can be used to project our slogans on to public buildings. They can also be used outdoors for screening our videos in a gazebo to draw more people to a rather unimaginative literature stall.
I’ve also suggested an complementary and supplementary strategy to leafleting by giving out Party logo flags.
Why not add cheap tin badges, too. A machine to make them aren’t pricey. Only enamel metal badges are expensive and hard to manufacture.
They are not too labour intensive or requiring great numbers to turn out to accomplish.
All that depends on members stepping up to the plate and I have to accept what I am told …no-one is committing themselves except the same old faces who rightly feel an unfair burden being placed upon their shoulders.
We have a recent example at the Tolpuddle Festival, when a non-member had to help out at the book stall.
I think your proposal has to link to actual wider political actions taking place and help lighten existing members load.
That means no fixed time-table and being able to put into place flexible arrangements at quick notice, sometimes.
Isn’t Lancaster Br. supposed to be organizing some sort of social weekend gathering to address members inter-connection with the Party and other members. I’ve not heard anything about it since the initial idea being aired.
How the media is side-lining Sanders by manipulating poll figures
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/07/27/msnbcs-anti-sanders-bias-makes-it-forget-how-do-math
Just to remind us of the oil motive
Trump has renewed Chevron licence to drill for oil and gas in Venezuela despite sanctions. Also renewed were the licencesfor oil-field service companies Halliburton, Schlumberger, General Electric’s Baker Hughes and Weatherford International.
Pompeo believe that having a US company in Venezuela would be an asset after any removal of Maduro.
https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/sanctions-firm-drilling-oil-venezuela-190726174848429.html
I think the first thing to do is ensure that members regularly visit this forum and express their views and exchange information on it.
Without a forum that reflects our membership, why on earth should a non-member take any notice of it.
I am afraid the same non-interest by our members is shown in our blogs.
I also must confess a certain personal culpability in that I am not a member of Facebook, Twitter or any other social media that other members of the Party use and so I miss out on fertile discussion and certain useful memes
So if a digest is being suggested, then we can perhaps bring together all those diverse outlets.
With equal sincerity, Marquito, what took place against the corrupt Puerto Rican elite can be commended as can be the mass protests going on in Hong Kong to defend their democratic privileges.
We should be very careful in promoting the idea of direct action mass disobedience in all situations and circumstances.
Our most powerful tool still remains our vote and elections which ultimately supplies the legitimacy needed for change.
Do not forget Venezuela where mass demonstrations were organized by Guaido and America’s proxy puppets in an endeavor to overthrow Maduro. It remained Maduro’s constitutional rule that enabled him to retain his presidency.
My only caveat to your post, Rubychard, would be that some of the human species would survive (how many is pure speculation and conjecture). It would not be the total extinction of humanity.
But we can suggest that climate change could lead to the end of civilization as it is now, the loss of technological advancement, a regression of social evolution which some Deep Green primitives may well believe to be beneficial but an idea dismantled by Murray Bookchin.
I agree with you that there is a reservoir of potential support in the environmentalist movement to tap into. But it also requires some harsh home-truths to be told, and how we do that is the crux of the question, imho.
Maybe you can respond to my plea for assistance
The Bankers Favorites
Biden, Buttigieg, Booker and Harris
Not Sanders and Warren
Just to switch the discussion – Karl Marx the Christian apologist
A reminder that if some of us have forgotten, others haven’t
I thought I had made myself crystal clear with my suggestion but to repeat and emphasise
WE HAND THEM OUT to the participants on the marches and demonstrations, along with leaflets which we already strive to do.
I never suggested that we ourselves form a flag-waving bloc. I don’t believe we have enough zimmer frames for such a task.
But if as you say we can no longer gather even three or four members to go along to events then I suggest we just wrap things up as a political party and stop pretending to be one and go extinct the same way as the SLP.
The fact just only a third of the supposed membership bothered to take part in the last party poll is not a hopeful sign. Robbo’s project ten-minutes- a-month-for-socialism appears to have fallen on deaf ears. It appears most cannot give ten minutes a year.
Selling up our assets and cashing in our investments will give each active member a surprisingly generous windfall rather than wait for the utility providers and local council gradually drain away our funds.
I think she may well have had her hands full of others trying to influence her, politicians NGOs and media.
It is more constructive to approach those more directly, face-to-face.
Extinction Rebellion are on our doorstep and perhaps the history of non-obedience campaigns such as CND and anti-war protests might be a lesson they should be reminded of, but conducted comradely and non-combatively so to have the best effect and gaining the widest hearing.
A explanatory leaflet on that subject along with another of the socialist environmental anti-capitalist case. I always think it strange that we believe just one leaflet is sufficient to distribute on such large topics. Just as easy to hand out two different leaflets at the same time as only one especially with distinctive designs and lay-outs.
We have the best ever slogan, “Socialism or barbarism, if we are lucky.”
Maybe we should list other slogans as another thread on the forum suggests we do.
“Share the World and Spare the Planet”
Or
“A World to Win, A Planet to Protect”
Anymore slogan ideas?
Climate change is not going away so I keep wondering why the Party is still reluctant to produce any banners with it as the specific theme.
We could buy in bulk cheap red flags stapled to bamboo canes featuring our globe logo with a suitable slogan accompanying it and just a mention of our website address
Surely we been to enough demos and marches and seen how the SWP floods it with their placards and attracts publicity.
There is no reason we cannot do the same with something that also is a good enough made souvenir that they take home stick on their walls and take to their next protest, so we do not to be accused of contributing to throwaway waste but something recyclable, as I have been accused of a few times when handing out leaflets.
If we aren’t present, no-one is going to hear what voice we have
ALB, no deal Brexit might be the worse option but will a phased Brexit really make much difference to the markets?
The best option would be to Remain but there are genuine worries of how such a reversal would go down with the hard nationalist Brexiteers.
I have no personal anecdotal evidence that it would bring increased polarization to politics and serious disorder in the streets. I rely on your good selves to relay the feelings and emotions of the Brexiteers.
Will Boris be a very transitory PM? I’m still not sure. Would he lose an election against Corbyn? Again I rely on secondary sources but my gut feeling is he would win as the City of London fear Corbyn more than Brexit and the media will do its job of irrational scare-mongering.
But perhaps i’m being gloom and doom again.
Is Boris going to be a war-monger? He is following the line of the EU regards the nuclear deal.
Hunt may well have been more of a hawk.
Well, at a personal level, my post office pension is going to fall further in value…that a given.
A lot of ex-pats are already financially suffering with the unrelenting drop in exchange rates and it ain’t going to get any better.
Immigration here are already raising the minimum level monthly income requirements for UK residents visas.
When Brexit materializes it will be a lot worse for many others, unfortunately, with the loss of jobs, price rises as the UK goes into recession.
But my perception is always a bit gloomy and doom-laden I have been told.
The capitalist class might feel the effects in their share dividends, but it will be workers who will feel the real pain, as always, with less disposable cash.
