The Militant (logo) 
   Vol.65/No.1            January 8, 2001 
 
 
Volunteers advance project to streamline Pathfinder production
Ninety join year-end international effort in New York; Reprint Project workers close in on goal to digitize books
(front page)
 
BY MAGGIE TROWE AND NORTON SANDLER
NEW YORK--Volunteers are rapidly nearing completion of a special project that will help strengthen and streamline the distribution of Pathfinder books around the world. The international volunteer project, which began December 14, will be completed on December 24, in time for a big wrap-up party and celebration.

Sixty-nine participants joined the effort as of December 20. They came from around New York and 23 other U.S. cities, as well as from Australia, Canada, France, Iceland, and New Zealand. A few dozen more are expected to join the project for the final push to completion.

"The labor these volunteers are contributing is part of a broad effort to increase the access by workers and farmers to the revolutionary books they need," said Angel Lariscy, a project organizer from Brooklyn.

The three New York City branches of the Socialist Workers Party are hosting the project and organizing housing and other arrangements for the volunteers. Each day at 7:30 a.m., Lariscy explained, volunteers attend an orientation session at the offices of the Garment District branch of the SWP, located in the mid-Manhattan industrial district where thousands of garment workers converge every day to their jobs as sewing machinery operators, pressers, and bundle handlers.

At the morning meetings, volunteers hear a report and discuss the progress they are making toward completion of the work allocated for this project as well as the schedule for the day. They discuss how their work is connected to the worldwide efforts to expand the sales of Pathfinder titles on street corners in workers districts like the New York Garment District, to factory floors, to the commercial outlets and libraries where working people go to find books.

Classes on Marxism have been organized in the evenings by both the Upper Manhattan and the Garment District branches of the party. On December 16 and 21, volunteers from out of town joined the teams that distribute Pathfinder books and pamphlets along with the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial in Washington Heights, the Garment District, and Brooklyn's Sunset Park area.

The volunteers are transferring thousands of items of data from an old software program to an Internet-based accounting software system that can be accessed at numerous computer work stations. This includes transferring lists of Pathfinder's customers--libraries and bookstores across the United States and in other countries--to the new system; as well as an up-to-date inventory of the 700-plus Pathfinder titles that are either paperback books, hard-bound books for libraries, or pamphlets.

In addition to listing the correct title of each book along with the number of them in stock, volunteers are entering the title's author, price, International Standard Book Number, and all the open records such as invoices due from bookstores and other customers, and money owed to vendors.  
 
New system a big advance
The new system will help simplify and improve the capacities of Pathfinder's accounting program, saving time and money by making it possible for more than one person in the offices where Pathfinder Press is housed to enter data at the same time. This is an improvement over the old software program, which could only be accessed from a single computer station, one computer at a time. Five outdated computers will be eliminated by the end of the project.

The volunteers are working in pairs, with one person reading data from a printout and the other entering new information. Then the first person proofreads the data before submitting it. This method ensures a high rate of accuracy.

"The volunteers are highly motivated, so they learn fast," said Ilona Gersh, a volunteer who is a laid-off auto parts worker from Detroit. "Those who learn at 9:30 in the morning are often training others at 10:30," said Gersh.

After each segment of data entry is completed, the volunteers do a final proofread of the new data. "The teams of volunteers are working in a disciplined way and with enthusiasm, and as a result their rates are quite good," said Gersh, "and we get new people every day."

A few of the volunteers are seeing the project through from beginning to end. Others are taking off work or taking advantage of holiday shutdowns to come in for a few days. Many volunteers from the New York City area are coming in on their days off or for a three-hour stint in the morning or in the evening before or after their work shift.

Mindy Brudno, a rail worker from Albany, volunteered on her two days off. Many of the volunteers from Pathfinder's printshop are taking part in the effort after their workday ends or before it begins.

Natalie Tremblay, 18, a student from Montreal, has been on the project from the start. "I really like meeting people in the socialist movement from different cities," she said. "And the work is great because you are doing it because you want to, you know it's important, and you learn from each other."

Omari Musa, a socialist worker from Pittsburgh, said this was the first such volunteer project he had joined in a number of years. "I'm enjoying the camaraderie of working together to accomplish an important goal and see the bigger picture of where our efforts on the sales of Pathfinder books are headed," he said.

"It's interesting how many accounts Pathfinder has," said Alyson Kennedy, a garment worker from St. Louis. "I was impressed at how many individuals send in catalog orders for Pathfinder books, and the geographical spread of the bookstore accounts," she said.  
 
60 copies of 'Capitalism's World Disorder' ordered for college class
"Having the volunteers here from other cities is a boost to socialists in New York," said Ved Dookhun, organizer of the SWP branch in Upper Manhattan and a volunteer in Pathfinder's printshop. "Volunteers from France and Quebec came to our class on Lenin's pamphlet Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism," he said. "And they also joined us selling books and periodicals from street tables in Upper Manhattan last Sunday, after they had finished work on the project for the day."

The Pathfinder project is a key part of a series of advances being made by the publishing house and its supporters.

A recently launched effort is under way to increase sales of Pathfinder books city by city. This can lead over the next several months to Pathfinder titles being available to workers and farmers at an expanded number of bookstores, libraries, and other small stores that carry books.

A good example of this came December 20, when Pathfinder's business office received a classroom order for 60 copies of Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium, by Jack Barnes. This order was placed by an eastern Pennsylvania college, a result of the efforts by supporters from Allentown and Pittsburgh to expand sales.

On December 16, the English-language version of the pamphlet Pathfinder was Born With the October Revolution by Mary-Alice Waters came off the printing presses in time to be on display at a tamale dinner and party for volunteers and others, held in conjunction with the project and also a meeting here of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee.

The Spanish-language version of the pamphlet, Pathfinder nació con la Revolucíon de Octubre, was issued in November in time to be taken to the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico, which 350,000 people attended. At that book fair, 570 Pathfinder books and pamphlets, a big majority in Spanish, were sold by a team of nine volunteers from around the United States.  
 
Books readied for Havana Book Fair
Two new Pathfinder books are being readied in time for the February 2-10 Havana International Book Fair. This event, now annual, is attended by tens of thousands of Cubans, and attracts others from various countries in the Americas and Europe. The first Pathfinder run of the Spanish-language version of Making History, which contains interviews with four generals of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, will be off the presses in time for the Havana fair. That book was a collaborative effort between Pathfinder and Editora Política in Cuba, which published a limited edition in Spanish last year. That printing rapidly sold out.

Now, members of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution have requested 300 copies of this title to be made available in municipal libraries throughout Cuba. The association is made up of politically active combatants encompassing several generations of experiences--from Cuba's revolutionary war in the late 1950s, which led to the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship, to international combat missions in Angola and elsewhere in the world in the 1970s and '80s.

Also being prepared in time for the Havana book fair is Fertile Ground: Che Guevara and Bolivia. This new book is a firsthand account by Bolivian revolutionary Rodolfo Saldaña of his experiences in helping to organize support in the capital of Bolivia for the 1966-67 guerrilla campaign led in that South American country by revolutionary leader Ernesto Che Guevara. Guevara was killed by U.S.-backed Bolivian troops.

Saldaña details why Bolivia was ripe for revolutionary struggle in the late 1960s, his experiences and the lessons learned working in the tin mines and helping recruit workers to the Bolivian Communist Party (PCB); how he and some other members of the PCB were won to backing Guevara's revolutionary effort; the political support they received from Cuba's revolutionary leadership, and the deadly obstacle the PCB leadership posed to successfully carrying out the guerrilla campaign.  
 
Reprint volunteers near goal
Pathfinder Reprint Project volunteers will format and proofread both of these new titles--part of their newly expanded responsibility for the production of Pathfinder books and pamphlets. In July the reprint volunteers took a goal of completing 30 books by year's end, which they are closing in on.

The more than 200 supporters of Pathfinder around the world involved in this project are also driving to complete in electronic form, on compact disc, seven more titles by the end of December. They organize their production and workflow on an Internet database that allows a volunteer to work on the project as easily in London or Auckland, New Zealand, as in Houston or Chicago.

The volunteer workers in Pathfinder's printshop are organizing blocks of time dedicated exclusively to Pathfinder book production on the shop's presses and in its finishing department so that the completed, digitized books are rapidly put back in print.

Simultaneous with the opening of this volunteer project, the Socialist Workers Party National Committee met in New York December 16-18. The party leadership heard a report by SWP national secretary Jack Barnes and discussed the roots and implications for the working class of the 35-day intensely factional dispute between the big-business Republican and Democratic parties that arose as a result of the unusually close presidential election. This conflict ended when the U.S. Supreme Court halted a recount of ballots in selected Florida counties and issued a ruling that resulted in George W. Bush being declared the winner of the 2000 presidential election, thus averting an extension of the factional warfare over the disputed election to the U.S. Congress.

SWP leader Barnes noted that the Democratic Party White House of the Clinton-Gore administration and its Justice Department have shown little interest in responding to requests by the NAACP to probe voting rights violations of Blacks, including recently naturalized U.S. citizens from Haiti, on election day in Florida, after working people who are Black registered to vote in record numbers in that state.

Barnes detailed the change in the family structure in the United States, Canada, and most other imperialist countries that is resulting in a big increase in the number of households headed today by "single women." This historic change will affect coming social conflicts and will increasingly be a cutting-edge question in the so-called cultural war, in which "the damage to society by divorce" will more and more be a rallying call of rightists.

Party leader Mary-Alice Waters reported on steps supporters of the communist movement are taking to expand sales of Pathfinder titles to bookstore and libraries. Supporters will organize this sales effort and keep the records of what is accomplished, she said, but this will require leadership attention and concerted work on the part of SWP branches.

Waters underscored Pathfinder's publishing priorities over the next couple of months and the important opportunities that exist for collaboration with publishing houses in Cuba on these and other new titles.

Jack Willey reported to the party leadership on the work being carried out by the party's branch organizing committees. These small units have been established in several cities over the past two years, said Willey, to concentrate on the openings that exist to be part of the resistance to the employers' attacks on meat packers, textile workers, garment workers, and coal miners, and to allow socialist workers to integrate themselves more deeply in the struggles of working farmers. Willey emphasized the interest and openness among vanguard workers involved in these struggles to revolutionary and communist literature, especially since the end of the retreat of the working class that lasted for much of the 1990s.  
 
 
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