On April 7, 8 and 9, a NAM organizers’ workshop was held at Volo, Illinois, north of Chicago. Over 40 chapter and pre-chapter members attended from around the country. The gathering, at a YMCA camp, was the first opportunity for many chapter people to exchange experiences and ideas with other NAM members since the Davenport conference last November. It was an upper.

The workshop was prepared and run by Heather and Paul Booth and Bob and Day Creamer, all of whom are active in liberal mass movements in Chicago. The sessions were opened by Karen Smith on behalf of the NIC and the National Office. The NIC criticized itself for inadequate assistance in planning the workshop, and thanked the Booths for their initiative. Karen also explained that while NAM is committed to building a mass socialist organization, there are different ideas within the organization of how this should he done. The presentation by the Booths, which was based largely on their experience in non-socialist organizations, represented their own perspective.

Heather Booth began the first session with an analysis that stressed the net!d for reformist movements to meet people’s immediate needs. She asserted· that people can be given a sense of their own power and strength through organization of movements that can win particular struggles and alter the existing relations of power by establishing local spheres of control. She emphasized the need to develop mass organizations, and stressed the need within them for divisions of labor and clear lines of leadership. She called on those present to fight perfectionism, correct lineism, impossibilism, and all the other isms that have distracted. the Left. She pointed out that organizing is the hardest thing to do, that it is much harder than doing service work, para-military activity, or agit-prop. Following her introduction, the group split up into sub-groups for discussion of this perspective.

For the rest of the week-end organizing tactics were discussed. The problem of how to build mass movements with a socialist consciousness was raised by several chapter people, but since the workshop was on techniques of organizing, these questions were not worked through. Presentations focused on the nitty-gritty of organizing a community for specific mass actions, and the methods of making NAM chapters function well, grow and be effective. In this brief report it is impossible to do justice to the material presented at the workshop, much of which was detailed and valuable information. Many chapter people thought these sessions useful and asked for written materials for wider use.

The participants had the opportunity to learn basic organizing skills, and also a valuable exchange of experience occurred. It became clear to many people whose chapters have been floundering that NAM is really a national organization, developing a large variety of activities, both positive and negative.· Many chapters expressed similar problems of getting started and of defining themselves as a movement for democratic socialism. People went home with many new ideas, and with the intention of trying them out and reporting on their experiences at the June convention.