Organising meetings?

[comradeadam]

I was wondering if anyone could give me tips on orgainising a public meeting?.We are thinking about screening a documentary, then have the leader of our party give a talk and some discussion and tea and coffee and stuff.

[TC]

Um, if you can't figure out how to run a meeting on your own its probably a little early to have your own party lol.

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2006, 11:10 AM
I was wondering if anyone could give me tips on orgainising a public meeting?.We are thinking about screening a documentary, then have the leader of our party give a talk and some discussion and tea and coffee and stuff.
Ask the leader, because s/he obviously has more knowledge and understanding and abilities than anyone else.

We must all listen to the party leader.

[TC]

Uh simply the fact of electing someone a leader for organizational purposes doesn't imply that they're more knowlegable or capable then anyone else or that they nessessarily recieve any kindof differential treatment to them, it simply delegates responsibility. Every large group of people working towards some sort of aim has a leader or group of leaders, whether their positions are formalized or not. Even open forum concensus based decision making meetings have defacto leaders. Anarchists are in denial of this which only makes their organization less democratic and more arbitrarily heirarchical in practice as it amounts to the domination of a few strong personalities instead of the will of the majority.

[PRC-UTE]

Find a few people who can help you and make a committee. Distribute responsibilites as it works best, such as making fliers, contacting media, someone to bring the tea, the video, etc. Decide on the venue, event format, date and time.

Identify groups in your area that would be interested, send out the invites and get the ball rolling. It's not too hard. There are lots of lists on the net and on this forum for leftist groups that you can start with.

Make up a few fliers (which can be done on MS Word if necessary, let me know if you'd like any tips in this regard), paste em up around working class areas (you can google recipes for wheat paste, takes about a minute to make).

I don't know if that's the info you wanted as you weren't too specific, but if you anymore questions, just throw em out.

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2006, 09:48 PM
Every large group of people working towards some sort of aim has a leader or group of leaders,
Not a single Libertarian Communist organisation has a leader. Nor do any Anarchist groups. I can't really challenge your 'de facto' comment, because you pulled it out of your ass.

[PRC-UTE]

We should explain what the actual purpose of leadership has been within the workers movement historically.

Leadership is not something to completely ignore through purely adhoc organisations, nor is it a matter of picking the person who would do the best job. The purpose of leadership is to train our class to take power. James Connolly provided a clear example of this in the SLP and ISRP with the practice he instagated of revolving the position of chair every meeting. Marx adopted a similar position with the communist movement upon his joining.

Lenin wrote that everyone would take turns leading until we were used to having no one lead, though this wasn't seriously enshrined as policy by the Bolsheviks.