Five days before the January 31 target for collecting the pledges, the total amount pledged topped $185,000, with more than $125,000 in hand.

A contribution from a dozen industrial workers and others in Sydney, Australia, who pooled their resources to send in $2,710, boosted the appeal last week. “The progress reports in the Militant are exciting. Hope this helps take the fund over the top,” Joan Cryder wrote from Sydney.

“We will be getting new pledges and simultaneously picking up checks right until the deadline,” said Joel Britton from Los Angeles. Britton is a chairperson for the Headquarters Appeal, along with Martín Koppel, Arrin Hawkins, and Janice Prescott. He urged anyone with an outstanding pledge to send in their check right away.

“When I called one SWP supporter yesterday to set up a time to meet, she told me she had just been reading the Militant’s coverage of the Headquarters Appeal,” said Britton in a January 25 interview from Los Angeles. “She said she enjoyed reading about individuals giving larger sums. ‘That’s really what I want to do but I can’t now,’ she said. ‘Not until mid-February or so, when I expect to have an increase in my income.’ I told her a generous contribution to our movement’s spring fund drive would be appreciated at that time, but that we must wrap the appeal up by January 31. She said she will bring a $150 contribution to the next Militant Labor Forum where we will be celebrating the publication of Rebelión Teamster by Farrell Dobbs, and the successful completion of our fund-raising efforts for the new political center in New York City.

“No sooner did I hang up the phone, here comes a call from another supporter who had sent in $1,000 in December in response to the first article that appeared in the Militant on the Headquarters Appeal. ‘Our household has another $1,000 to contribute,’ he said, and asked where to send it.”

Dave Prince from New York spent the third week of January in Chicago and Boston joining local efforts there to raise funds. Fund chairperson Janice Prescott joined Prince in Boston on the January 24-25 weekend. Like Britton, Prince said he had been struck by the “unsolicited raises in contributions that have been coming in.”

Prescott described a meeting with one supporter who had first met the movement during the 1960s and recalled the preparations for moving the headquarters at that time to 873 Broadway in New York City. “George Novack, a longtime SWP leader and author of several Pathfinder books asked the supporter to come look at the new space,” Prescott reported. “Then he said ‘What do you think you could do to help make it a reality?’”

Prescott stressed the value of individual meetings with supporters. “As crucial to the success of the construction that they are, the value of these meetings is more than just financial contributions,” she said. “It also lies in cementing relationships and making sure that those who support the need for this new headquarters are kept in the loop about the opportunities it provides for our movement.”

Over the past week, Chicago appeal supporters raised their goal from $4,000 to $11,000, said Prince. They have pledges or contributions already in hand from 56 people in the Chicago area and from individuals in St. Louis, Missouri; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Muncie, Indiana. The contributions range from $4 to $2,000, Prince said.

Appeal co-chair Arrin Hawkins described one of the meetings she and Martin Koppel participated in with a New York SWP supporter. “After some discussion, the individual we met with responded enthusiastically by agreeing to raise her initial pledge, to contact several people in the area she thought would be interested in making a contribution, and offered to cook a dinner for the volunteer work crew,” Hawkins said.

This reporter spent several days in Miami and Tampa working on fundraising, and also spoke at a special Militant Labor Forum in Miami on the appeal January 23. Also speaking was Eric Simpson, one of the designers of the covers and photo displays for Pathfinder’s new books Rebelión Teamster by Farrell Dobbs and Aldabonazo: Inside the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1952-58 by Armando Hart. Simpson described how these new books would be tools for revolutionists to use in building the communist movement in this country and around the world.

Pete Seiders, who had spent several days working on the volunteer construction crew, also spoke at the meeting. Seiders said he was impressed by the crew’s seriousness, competence, and organization. He also described his first impressions of coming into the headquarters at 873 Broadway in New York in 1965, when he was 19 years old, and the lasting impression this made. He appealed to others in the audience to join the work crew in the coming days.

Chris Hoeppner, one of the organizers of the volunteer work crew at the new headquarters in New York, reported in a telephone interview that the plumbing has been installed in the new kitchen there and that it has been successfully water tested.

“The crew is organized so a pace is maintained that ensures we stay on schedule,” Hoeppner said. “But this does depend on volunteers with all levels of construction skills joining the effort, including those completely new to this kind of work. It will be especially important for volunteers with electrical, painting, and other similar skills to arrange their schedules to be able to join the crew for a week or two in February,” he emphasized.

Hoeppner said many crew members participate in classes organized by the New York Headquarters branch and that supporters in the area are preparing meals for the crew several times a week.

Contributions should be written to the 2004 Headquarters Building Appeal and sent c/o SWP National Office, 306 W. 37th St., 10th floor, New York, NY 10018.

See progress in appeal.  
 
 
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