BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS AND LISA ROTTACH
As the Militant went to press this week, workers in
Pathfinder's print shop were binding Malcolm X on Afro-
American History. This is the fourth book produced this year
as a joint effort of volunteers from around the world and the
print shop. It was also the first title that supporters of the
communist movement put into electronic format cover-to-cover.
"We are now within two days of sending to Pathfinder Cuba for Beginners by e-mail," said Bobbi Sack in a September 9 telephone interview from her home in Cincinnati. Sack and Mike Shur from New York organize a team of 15 volunteers who are putting into digital form internal graphics and covers of Pathfinder books.
On September 6-7, during Labor Day weekend, more than 120 members and supporters of the Socialist Workers Party, Communist Leagues in Canada and New Zealand, and Young Socialists volunteered their labor at the Pathfinder building in New York, which houses the publisher's editorial facilities and printing factory. During this "Red Weekend," they prepared materials for virtually all internal illustrations and covers of books and pamphlets to be sent to those digitizing graphics.
The supporters of the communist movement organized by Sack and Shur live in Detroit, Cincinnati, London, Minneapolis, New York, Seattle, and the San Francisco Bay Area. They communicate largely through the Internet and their work of putting graphics into electronic form is supervised by the Pathfinder Volunteer Steering Committee based in the Bay Area. This steering committee organizes about 150 volunteers worldwide who are converting Pathfinder books into digital files - from text to illustrations to covers.
Digitizing photos and other art work is the latest accomplishment of this international brigade. Their persistent efforts are making it possible for Pathfinder to keep in print its entire back list of some 350 titles by cutting labor time necessary to produce the books, lowering the skill levels needed to work in the print shop, and driving down production costs while sacrificing nothing of Pathfinder's quality standards - in fact improving readability and overall quality of many reprints.
Cuba for Beginners, for example, consists of 153 pages of illustrations by the Mexican cartoonist Rius. The book sketches the history of Cuba and its socialist revolution. This title was first published in 1970. Pathfinder produced a second edition a year later. In the quarter century that followed the publisher has reprinted the book 10 times to meet sales demand. For each printing the book was reproduced from film flats stored in drawers for years. Dust and occasional scratches from repeated use caused deterioration of the film flats, used to burn printing plates. Producing new flats to avoid printing with lower quality, or to make it possible to reproduce the book on new presses Pathfinder's print shop acquired over the years, required hand stripping of film - a highly skilled and labor-intensive process. With the conversion of the book into electronic form, "Scratches and other imperfections can be fixed much quicker and easier in the computer," Sack said. And the labor to strip film is no longer needed.
Red Weekend
"Over the weekend we burned a bridge to the past," said
Sarah Katz, a member of the YS National Committee and a
garment worker in Chicago who took part in the Red Weekend.
"And we took a step that was necessary to prepare books for
printing by volunteers utilizing modern computer technology.
This could only be done with a collective effort."
About 75 of those who joined the volunteer effort at the Pathfinder building September 6-7 worked on preparing materials for graphics. They disassembled some 5,000 flats, separating film with photos, cleaning it, packaging it properly, and cataloguing it so it can be sent to the team organized by Sack and Shur. After this process was completed for every book, the film flats containing book text were discarded. This step removed the safety net of going back to producing the books with the old methods. All titles on Pathfinder's back list can now be reprinted only from the electronic files provided by volunteers.
In addition to preparing materials for internal illustrations of all 350 titles Pathfinder publishes or distributes, volunteers prepared the film for covers of nearly 320 books and pamphlets to be sent to those who will convert them into electronic files. Work on the covers required knowledge of stripping film because of the many colors involved. Most of those who worked on this project had done stints in Pathfinder's print shop in the past. Shirley Peña, for example, now an airline worker and member of the International Association of Machinists in Miami, said that years ago she personally stripped the film flats of the first book she prepared for digitizing during the Red Weekend. The bulk of the work on the covers was completed September 6-7. Four volunteers used time off work over the next couple of days to virtually complete the project. A handful of volunteers with stripping skills will return for a day over the next week to finish preparing the remaining 30 book covers.
Those who participated included dozens of socialist workers, 23 members of the Young Socialists, and eight supporters of the communist movement from 12 U.S. cities as well as from Canada and New Zealand. Many participants also took part in the Million Youth March in Harlem the day before, a Militant Labor Forum in Brooklyn protesting the U.S. bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan, and a class on "The vanguard role of the Black nationality in the coming American revolution."
Red Weekend volunteers also completed restoration of the east wall of the Pathfinder building. With a lot of elbow grease they removed salt residues on the inside of that wall, which had been accumulated from water leaks. The outside of the east wall had been repaired earlier in the summer, sealing it off from water penetration. Volunteers cleaned and organized the basement of the Pathfinder building into a maintenance area for the machinery and physical plant as well. These steps were necessary for the structural soundness of the building and for improving the appearance and working conditions in the editorial and other production departments.
The trade unionists and young fighters who took part also had a chance to get a glimpse of and discuss publication of new revolutionary literature, necessary for building the communist movement. An Education for Socialists bulletin titled Pathfinder Was Born with the October Revolution had just come off the presses (see ad on page 5). The draft cover design of issue no. 11 of New International, a magazine of Marxist politics and theory, that will be published by October 1 was on display in a computer screen at Pathfinder's editorial offices. "I am particularly thrilled about the publication of the pamphlet Puerto Rico: Independence Is a Necessity by Rafael Cancel Miranda," said José Sánchez, a Puerto Rican living in Washington, D.C., who recently joined the Young Socialists and came to New York for the Red Weekend (see article and ad on pages 8-9).
Volunteers also had a chance to tour the print shop, see the labor savings from beginning to organize the factory around a digital flow of work, and get a more concrete idea about the interrelationship between the effort to revolutionize production of communist literature and to strengthen and transform the structure and cadre of a communist party. The electronic files of books sent by supporters of the communist movement are used by the shop to output book pages properly arranged for printing on film flats through an upgraded imagesetter, acquired by the print shop in July. The flats are then used to burn printing plates. This step will be bypassed too when the shop gets computer-to-plate technology that allows production of printing plates directly from the digital files.
To acquire this equipment a Capital Fund has been launched. One of the volunteers during the Red Weekend decided to up their pledge to this fund by $2,000.
Mike Fitzsimmons, a member of the United Steelworkers of America in Cleveland and organizer of the SWP's Trade Union Committee, used his days off work September 8-9 and was part of the crew that completed the preparation of most covers for digitizing. "From talking with comrades in the print shop and others, it seems that the Red Weekend was a tremendous boost in morale," he said. "It generated some momentum for us, who, as part of the vanguard of the working class that's leading many defensive struggles against the employers, can take qualitative steps towards changing how revolutionary literature is produced. This is tied to proletarianizing the party's branches and union fractions."
"The accomplishments of the Red Weekend will put us in a better position to meet our goal of preparing digitally an average of 10 books per month," said Bobbi Sack, "even though achieving this is still a little down the road."
Sack described both the progress and some of the challenges in putting Pathfinder book covers and internal illustrations into electronic format.
Going through the experience of preparing Malcolm X on Afro-American History and Cuba for Beginners, made it possible to put down in writing work procedures and quality controls that facilitate drawing new volunteers into the work. While Bobbi and her husband Greg Sack digitized the internal illustrations for Cuba for Beginners, for example, Sybil Perkins and Robbie Scherr in Seattle converted into electronic format the book's cover.
The volunteers scan the film or original prints of photos or drawings sent by Pathfinder but reconstruct the rest of the books' multicolor designs from scratch in the computer - including the type and color tints. "This is less costly, yields the highest possible quality, and provides digital files that can be easily edited in the computer," Sack said.
"Our main challenge now is involving everyone who has volunteered in the work," Sack said. "Right now only seven of the 15 members of the graphics team have assignments. It has taken the organizers time to learn how to do it ourselves before we could train others. This will change rapidly in the next month. And we still need more volunteers if we are going to digitize graphics and covers for at least 10 books a month, which is what's needed."
Those interested to join this effort can contact the Pathfinder Volunteer Steering Committee at rcheney3@compuserve.com