As you may or may not have already heard, Freedom Press is in some difficulty, both financial and in terms of volunteer labour – basically we need you.
As part of getting our act together to deal with these problems we are proposing to have a series of public meetings where you ask any questions you may have and discuss how we can drag the paper, the bookshop, the publishing house and the building out of trouble.
If you are part of a sympathetic group, we would like you to send a delegate or, if you won’t be meeting in time to discuss this letter before the 12th, an unofficial observer to help us in putting together our plan of action and suggest where support can be found. As an individual we would like you to come along and find out a bit more – you can even volunteer on the spot if you have the time!
The first of these meetings will be on Sunday, August 12th from 3pm at the London Action Resource Centre, 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES. We’ll be doing a short presentation and Q&A to hopefully answer any questions you might have about our situation, followed by discussion. Below is a tentative agenda:
Intro presentation [5-10 minutes]
Discussion for wider community [Half hour to an hour]
• Ideas: Proposals for financial and journalistic activity for the next year.
• Schedule: Explaining a basic plan of what we’ll be needing over the course of the next year and when, including activity and finances.
• Relaunch: Explaining a basic plan for content changes and discussing the October issue as a ‘relaunch’ issue.
• Action: Asking directly who is prepared to put time into helping specifically as editors and on distro/marketing/admin.
The meeting will then formally end, with any volunteers being asked to stay for a further half hour, in which we’ll flesh out ideas, allocate roles, look at the requirements for next year and plan to meet them, and if we have the numbers, firm up an editorial meeting.
We look forward to seeing you on the 12th, but if you can’t make it we will be holding another meeting in September for non-attendees, and our main meeting – where hopefully we will be able to unveil a full plan of action with your help, gain any support we still need – or announce our timeline for failure if not – will be at the London Anarchist Bookfair on October 27th.
Regards,
The Freedom Collective
