[Individual-members-EL] EL Congress

[Ulrich Deike]

Hi friends,

I like the suggestions made by Mike and Stephen. The question whether we are allowed to send delegates to the 2007 Congress is still pending. Otherwise we could perhaps appear as guest speakers (which would be rather odd) without the right to submit motions to the Congress.

Any motions concerning the statute (individual membership etc.) have to be discussed by the statuary committee first. Its German member Claudia Gohde (German Left PArty) promised to bring forward the 2 motions we individual members discussed and agreed upon in September. As far as I know this committee has convened before summer break 2007 but hasn’t made a statement about the future of our motions yet.
Stephen’s suggestions about a Europe-wide individual member branch starting in November go beyong our 1st motion. Given that the stuary committee submits our 2 motions unchanged you could maybe bring forward your suggestion as an alternative/addition to them.
I like the idea of a Europe-wide branch as much as Stephen does. However, I was told that for many member parties the whole concept of indiv. membership is a like a red rag to a bull. So a Europe-wide structure could frighten them even more. But maybe you should try to get it through.

The subscription fees of indiv. members shouldn’t go entirely to us since we are part of the EL and – as a tiny
group – depend on them very strongly. Especially if we are still asking for support of our meetings we should at least make symbolical contributions to the EL’s federal budget. Remember that we also want the executive board 
to push a future membership campaign, so it’s good if they have financial merits from that.
Maybe we suggest a monthly fee of 1 Euro to the EL and 1 Euro to the indiv. branch. Then there will also be members who give more to our branch and/or the EL.


Linking an EL-campaign against militarization with a membership campaign as Mike suggests is an excellent way to make the EL more popular and bigger. 


Take care 

Uli


_____________________________________________________________________
Der WEB.DE SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen!
http://smartsurfer.web.de/?mc=100071&distributionid=000000000066