The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-03-31

Section Leadership and Units
BY ALICE WARD
(Section 2, New York;

THE Section leadership takes an airing at the
L Convention and flops right back into the
same habits as before. Some new and good
comrades are drawn into this leadership and
are Immediately initiated into an impermissible
situation that has been existing in the section,
namely that the Section Committee do not find
it necessary to assign themselves to any unit.
The new elements Of the Section Committee
who are going to be trained for leadership get
their first lesson by attending their first Section
Committee meeting on Tuesday night 1.-THE
Unit meeting night, and so if these comrades
have been accustomed to attending their unit
meetings regularly and giving their units some
leadership they are Immediately given the
wrong slant on what their tasks are and where
their major work lies and the role of the unit
in the Communist Party, and the units are de-
prived of having them at the first meeting
where the Section Convention should naturally
have been discussed.
In my opinion, the regular attendance at unit
meetings of which one is a member is OF the
greatest Importance. Just sitting in at meet
ing as Section representative is next to use
less as you do not get involved in the real prob
lens Of the unit and so can only specifically
assist the unit in its work 1t is true that some
large sections cannot supply each unit with a
regular member of the Section Committee, but
INV N"A4ANS
those that it has
The Section Committee has many, many
meetings that last hours and out of these meet
ings are born instructions to the units such as:
"Unit No. -, hold open-air meeting in your
neighborhood under auspices Of League OF
Struggle for Negro Rights; 'Unit No. -,
hold open-air meeting in your neighborhood and
speak about Tenants League" When these in
structions are handed out it never occurs to the
leadership to question what the unit members
know about the L. S. N. r. Yes, know the
units are supposed to develop their own initia-
tive but actually what do you find in the
units? Tive capable comrades are all busy with
some meeting higher up, and, when they do
come, they scarcely enter into the life of the
unit, so as not to become involved too much,
and everything is left to the few who want to
carry out instructions but are hampered by in
experience and by being unable to speak the
language, etc.
But to come back to the Section Committee.
After the order is issued to the unit to hold its
open-air meeting or whatever else it may be,
nothing further is heard. The Section had its
comfortable little meeting and sent out its in
structions. Did these units have open-air meet
ings? (Often, they dont) How did they
ganize them? Who spoke? What was gained
by the meeting? No one asks. The Section
leadership seems to be satisfied that what they
don't know won't hurt them. The Section Com
mittee is composed Of nine members and don't
see any reason why when street meetings are
scheduled for the week some member Of the
Section Committee should not have the curiosity
to come and see what 1t looks like. This time
the committee can't give the reason that 1t has
not enough members to go round, as we have
not yet reached the stage where we hold 81
street meetings at one given time.
The Section Agitprop Director issues an or
paper. The Buro of this unit invites him to
Buro meeting in order to help them discuss
the possibilities Of such a paper, which they
recognize as being necessary and important
move with orgamzational possibilities, but he
fatty refused to attend this buro meeting on
the plea Of "somc more important meeting"
Always more important meetings" where you
stew in your own Juice and get as far away
from the real, practical problems that are con-
fronting the units as POSSIBLE! (Of course, I
suspect that he got the same kind of general
instruction about neighborhood papers from the
district, and doesn't know either what neigh
borhood paper should be like) So, what it
comes down to is, if the unit has any initiative
they will have paper If they have no initia-
tive then this suggestion will follow many SIM
liar ones and no one will be any the wiser Ger
tainly not the workers in that neighborhood.
The whole point is: What does the Section