Organizing People Into the Revolution... on the Spot

June 25, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a reader:

Revcom has been sharing good experiences in agitation (see, for example, the reports from Los Angeles, Harlem, and an immigration lawyers conference). But we also need to give people meaningful ways that they can be part of making the revolution, right on the spot. Each of the tasks below relates to one or another aspect of the second part of HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution, the part focused on what we need to do now. When you give someone an assignment, take them back to HWCW and show them where it fits in to getting to the definite aim of all this work—a revolutionary situation.

Fundraising—the Club needs to get a LARGE DONATION BUCKET that they ALWAYS put out in front of the agitator. People know what a bucket like that is for. We need a BIG bucket that says DONATE TO THE REVOLUTION, and a request to donate needs to be woven into the agitation regularly. Masses will give to this!

Signs/stickers to take up on the spot—when you start to gather a crowd, is there a way for them to begin representing on the spot? The other day a woman came and started agitating herself about the children being separated and stuck around for the whole thing, came to the block party for a couple hours and loved it all. On the street when she first joined in, I took a sign from someone else and gave it to her to hold—which she proudly did the whole time. It gave her a way to be part of it, not just a spectator. So let’s have signs with us, plenty of signs, to give out.

We also need to make, and give out, stickers for people to wear and take with them. Let people put on a sticker to wear (it needs to be a BRIGHT color) and take five HWCW with them, and let one of their first assignments be to give the pamphlet—and an invite to the anti-July 4 picnic—to the next five people who respond to their sticker (on the train, on the sidewalk, friends, family, etc.).

STACKS OF MATERIALS—when we have put stacks of HWCW out in front of the agitator, people have come and picked them up on their own. They seek them out. We should always do this—and we should pay more attention to who approaches to get one and make sure we are engaging them to enlist. And let’s also have stacks of BAsics that people can buy on the spot.