BY STEVE CLARK
NEW YORK - This was the week the light tables were carried
out of the Pathfinder Building and sold to a second-hand
dealer.
This was the week the huge, 50-year-old Robertson vertical camera - the piece of equipment around which a printshop for the communist movement was rebuilt in the early 1960s - was decommissioned.
Now there is no going back. The Pathfinder printshop is fully digital. Hours-devouring labor stripping up large sheets of film is no longer physically possible. Camera work is a thing of the past.
This was also the week that a brigade of volunteers from Boston, Cleveland, Newark, New York, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Vancouver began the final electrical and other work at the Pathfinder Building to make possible delivery of the new, state-of-the-art Agfa Galileo computer-to-plate equipment on Saturday, November 21.
And it was the week that three printshop workers began their training in the operation of the Galileo at Agfa's worldwide manufacturing center near Boston. They will return equipped to begin training others in the shop over the next several weeks.
Capital Fund
The down payment on the new equipment was made possible by
contributions during the last two weeks of October of $167,450
to an international Capital Fund, aimed at keeping Pathfinder
books in print for the revolutionary-minded workers and youth
who need them to help guide their trade union and other
political work.
These funds - which are used only for capital projects such as the computer-to-plate equipment, not to meet day-to-day operating expenses - came from contributions ranging from $1,000 to $50,000 from cadres and supporters of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists, including SWP and YS members who are active in seven industrial unions. Longtime veterans of the communist movement and younger members alike are joining in this effort, contributing job bonuses from employers, as well as windfalls from trusts, bequests, and settlements.
Another $9,000 has been raised over the past week, reports Maggie Trowe, a packinghouse worker in Des Moines, Iowa, and member of the committee organizing the fund. Other committee members are Nan Bailey of Seattle, Sam Manuel of Washington, D.C., Dave Prince of New York City, Norton Sandler of San Francisco, and Jack Willey of Chicago.
"Members of the Capital Fund committee are now traveling around the United States and Canada to appeal for funds," says Trowe, who is organizing these trips out of the fund's "war room" in Des Moines. "We need to collect the outstanding pledges of the initial contributions, and raise $176,000 more in November and early December to pay for the new computer-to- plate system. Soon after that, we will need $200,000 to pay off the remaining debt on our two Heidelberg presses and Goss Community web press. Altogether, that comes to $550,000."
Trowe reports that members of the Capital Fund committee and other socialist leaders will be giving special presentations at meetings to celebrate the recent publication of issue number 11 of the Marxist magazine New International in early November in New York, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Birmingham, Seattle, Chicago, Seattle, and Toronto. "In addition, special meetings of supporters will be organized in Birmingham, Toronto, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.," Trowe says.
Trowe recently participated in a meeting in Chicago on November 1 at the home of two supporters "who prepared a generous spread of food for the occasion." Trowe reported on the expanding resistance by working people to the antilabor course of the capitalists, and the political openings for communists to participate in these struggles with other workers and youth. Following her presentation, $2,000 was pledged on the spot and ideas were raised for follow-up meetings with a number of individuals in the Chicago area.
"Supporters in every city need to organize serious, working discussions right away on who to call, not just in the metropolitan area but in the surrounding region," Trowe says.
Red Weekend, Nov. 20-22
In addition to financial contributions, volunteer labor is
also needed to make possible the transformation in the
production of Pathfinder books and pamphlets. A Red Weekend is
being organized for Friday, November 20, through Sunday,
November 22, the weekend of the delivery of the Agfa Galileo
platemaker.
Friday, November 20, will be a key day in this effort. A crew of 25-30 people is needed to take down walls in the shop and office areas on the first floor of the Pathfinder Building in order to permit delivery of the huge crates containing the CTP equipment. Crews of 75-80 people will be needed Saturday and Sunday to rebuild the walls and do painting and other finishing work.
Volunteers began signing up for the Red Weekend at the October 24-25 meetings in Des Moines and Los Angeles of the SWP and Young Socialists' joint national union fractions. And the Santa Cruz Young Socialists chapter has raised more than $500 to fly in two of its members to participate and help out for a day or two beforehand, as well.
Pathfinder digitization project
Bringing in the computer-to-plate system is one part of a
broader international effort to make it possible to produce
Pathfinder books and pamphlets with a substantial reduction in
labor time and materials costs. Pathfinder must reduce the size
of its printshop in order to sustain its publishing program.
Some 140 supporters of the Socialist Workers Party and communist leagues in other countries are directly participating in another essential aspect of this effort. They have volunteered to convert the entire Pathfinder arsenal into electronic files and to send in fully digitized books, with the formatted text, cover, and graphics on a compact disk. This work is centralized by a steering committee of the volunteers based in San Francisco.
The volunteers, who had produced one book a month in this new way since June, submitted three books and pamphlets to Pathfinder in October. These included The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions, by Jack Barnes, one of the fundamental handbooks of working-class politics that guides the activity of the international communist movement. This the first title sent in full to Pathfinder on a CD-ROM, drawing together work done in cities around the world to produce the text, photo signature, and cover.
The other two October reprints were On the Jewish Question by Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, as well as the text of Women and Cuban Revolution, a collection of speeches and documents by leaders of the Cuban revolution, edited by Elizabeth Stone.
To find out how you can make a capital contribution, write to the Capital Fund Campaign, 410 West St., New York, NY 10014.