Photo ©1999 Michael Kaufman

We had a big delegation from Detroit at the convention in November, and people came back really excited, especially about the resolution on electoral politics. People were also psyched about the resolution on recruitment.

Everyone had sort of raised their hand and voted for the resolution on recruitment — but didn’t necessarily notice exactly what it said. So when we got back, we said, "Gosh, guys, we just passed this resolution that says we’re going to try to double our membership by January 31." And I remember somebody saying, "Did it really say that? I thought it was a typo!" No, it wasn’t a typo!

So we sat down and tried to figure out how we could make that happen. We had a good workshop on recruitment. The Pittsburgh Labor Party had some helpful ideas about it. They suggested that we go around the room and ask everyone why they joined the Labor Party — because if it was a good reason for you to join, then it’s probably a good reason for someone else to join. So that refreshed our memory about why we had joined, and reminded us to use those reasons in talking with other people. We also tried to sum up the arguments people put forward for why not to join, and we came up with all kinds of answers to those arguments.

Then we broke into small groups that focused on recruiting specific people. Everybody made a list of at least a couple of people they would try to recruit. Later, we came back to everyone and kind of nagged them about their lists.

We just kept totally focused on recruitment from the convention until January 31. We said: This is a one-shot deal, and we’re not going to bother people about recruitment again this year. And I think everybody thought: Okay, I’ll get in there and do my bit right now. I’m going to talk to everybody that I’ve been promising to talk to.

And so we were able to increase our membership to 250, up from 130. Some of that increase was because we joined with the Ann Arbor group, but a lot of it was new recruitment.

We also made a special effort to recruit during strikes, when membership is free. A lot of the strikers we recruited have stayed with us, even after they’ve gone back to work. In fact, some of our new members are full of new ideas and energy and enthusiasm.

We’ve started up our Just Health Care campaign here. We added about 300 people to the Committee of a Million roster on Labor Day. Everybody’s for it — it’s very popular. The only challenge is getting people to go beyond saying "It’s a good idea" to actually signing the roster and getting involved.

We’re planning to have another recruitment workshop at the beginning of December, and then we’ll focus on recruitment again through January.