by PIRAO chief
May 27th, 2002
Since September 11th, 2001, comrades globally have asked and wondered, "what are the American comrades doing about this?!" After September 11th, I vowed as PIRAO chief that we would double our circulation by September 11th, 2002.
For once, we based here in North America have some good news about what we were able to do about the U.$. war and repression offensive, because by our best measuring rods, MIM has already met its one year goal in building public opinion. While comrades from Palestine to Nepal are fighting hard to throw a wrench in the empire's machinery, it often seems unfair that North American comrades do not even reach their own small goals. Yet there can be no doubt that explosive growth in MIM's public opinion work can only help struggles all around the globe, if not immediately, then eventually.
The deadline for proposals to the 2002 MIM Congress was going to pass before we could summarize the May 2002 web traffic statistics, so we have collected the usual Web Minister statistics but for the first 26 days of May. Already, the number of users of our web site has tripled since the August 2001 statistics--from 8,627 people to over 25,500 in May of 2002. These are not figures for people momentarily accessing September 11th related news, because May is months after the September 11th occurrence.
Since it is somewhat unfair to compare a May with an August, we also compared May, 2001 with May, 2002. May, 2002 was an especially blockbuster month for us for two reasons. 1) Even though we did not have all 31 days' figures collected, already by May 27th we have broken our own usual pace of 80 to 100% annual growth. May broke the trend and saw almost 150% growth in readership over last year. In 2001, we had 1010 average successful requests per day and in a report with an incomplete day we still had 2460 pages requested per day in 2002. 2) We broke a seasonal trend in which MIM figures peak in January or September and drop off radically from April onwards. While in 2001, May figures declined from April figures, in 2002, May figures showed an increase over April, 2002 figures. The website set a new record for users.
May's acceleration of page readership and MIM's proven ability to break seasonal trends shows that MIM has "gotten over the hump" in controlling MIM web page readership growth. We now know what drives it and we can increase it when given the labor or money. In the past, we had been at the mercy of search engines and major news outlets to provide links to our page. Now we know how to control our own growth, and will no doubt get better at it. Thanks go to the Central Committee, the Boston branch, mousnonya@yahoo.com, our translator comrades, comrades who distribute MIM Notes in paper form and the many various comrades who give money: you made it possible for us to prove that we could not just grow the web page readership but accelerate it.
I would again like to make a special note about Distribution Ministry work. Maintaining old distribution patterns and starting new ones shows up in our web page statistics. We cannot have a great increase in public opinion statistics without using the old printed word on paper.
MIM has no comrades on payroll and consequently it takes very little money to see an increase in MIM effectiveness. We urge donors concerned with the direction of the united $tates to give to MIM even if MIM seems the most extreme organization. MIM can make efficient use of the money and no organization can successfully propose moderate change without a MIM clearing the way for revolutionary change.
I am not going to promise a stellar June, 2002, because Web Ministry leadership was not able to regroup and prepare offensives in time for June and because the Distribution Ministry faces substantial challenges as well. However, we are regrouping for a passable June and a very strong July and August to prove that we can put our past of dead summers behind us. Beyond the web statistics goals which are most indicative of the party's work overall, we have placed precise but secondary goals for Distribution Ministry work. In the words of socialist planners, we have already met our one-year planning goal. Let's now expand on and consolidate that work, by meeting various secondary goals and by proving we can do it consistently.
Contact MIM by writing mim@mim.org