[Individual-members-EL] reviewing the last 6 months

[Ulrich Deike]

Hi all,

I‘ve had a look at our working schedule from July 19, 2006 and now, 6 months later, it’s time for a first review. As I‘m not informed about everything going on in our group, please add and comment.

A. Things we tried to do self-responsibly:

1. There are a couple of British individual members. They haven’t launched their website yet. But they are very close to doing it (have prepared everything for it).
Unfortunately, Stephen’s attempt to gather the British members in London in early January failed as far as I know, but it was good news hearing of the attempt already. Thank you, Stephen! Maybe it’s worth a second trial preceded by a long-term announcement?

2. We have had the link “Join us” on the EL homepage for some months now, a real success. Thank you, Martin and Mike!

3. The passing on of contact data from Brussels to national groups as soon as a new member subscribes seems to have worked in a couple of cases in Germany. However, the influx has been very low despite the fact that we have distributed hundreds of flyers especially in and around Berlin. Also communication between individual members and the Brussels and Berlin offices is usually initiated by us. And we don‘t always get a response.

4.     National groups are still too small to start active political work beyond advertising ourselves.
        The German network has issued a flyer, printed it and keeps distributing it around the 2 spots on the map 
        (Leipzig and Berlin) where we got active members.

        A French flyer is ready to be printed (Thank you, Joseph and Mike!), but – as far as I know – we are still 
waiting for some money for it.

        The Brussels group of individual members has run some local political events, such as topical discussions 
        and film evenings. This is an example of what our political publicity can look like if we have more than one 
         active member in a town. Thank you Martin, Liberté and Sigfrido!

5. We haven’t submitted any articles to the EL website since my interview with Prof.Mahnkopf in August. This is probably due to our lack of time in the first place. Mike is trying to sort out our options for our own website preferably on a supranational level.

6. Trying to fill the white spots on the EL-map:
Lena and I have tried to use our contacts with Danish people, but in vain. (Anyway, thank you, Lena!) We’ll have to be present at more international gatherings of unionists and other left activists in order to get people involved. Or we could try out flyers completely in English and distribute them on vacation and other trips anywhere in Europe.

B. Things we had to sort out with the Executive Board: 

1. We didn’t have an international meeting of individual members, but there was a meeting of Germans in October. Only 10 people attended it and too much time was spent on sightseeing, too little time on actual plans and exchange of information. But we agreed to have another national meeting in 2007. Thanks to the Berlin office for their support.

2. Congress 2007:

As you can read in one of the web-articles from January 17, the Congress is scheduled for November. Every national party can send 12 delegates. Before we could possibly send delegates to a subsequent congress, the statute will have to be changed, which is what a statute commission has to discuss. This commission again includes only members of national parties.

3. There are membership cards now. Those of you who haven’t got one yet, please contact the office. 
Thank you Martin!

4. Just for statistics: How many individual members do you know there are in your country? In order to know where we are going and how slow/fast, we got to measure our size from time to time. 

That’s it from my side. So, what’s next? And how do you think we can improve our work?

Best wishes to all of you for 2007

Uli



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