Reports from Correspondents: Coming out with Kalatas while conducting mass work
The direct and sustained involvement in mass work of comrades in the Kalatas staff is an old policy and practice that has been reaffirmed and reestablished in Southern Tagalog these past few months. The small staff of Kalatas - the regional revolutionary mass paper in Southern Tagalog - is based within a guerrilla zone to enable it to undertake mass work and establish its own base of operations even as it conducts propaganda work for the entire region.
The Kalatas staff is integrated into a regular mass work unit. Jointly, the two groups compose a squad - the minimum necessary workforce for the conduct of mass organizing, military and propaganda work. In periods when the staff concentrates on its main work - publishing Kalatas - the other members of the mass work unit are able to ensure that mass work goes on uninterrupted in their area.
Immersion among the masses and integration into the mass work unit have greatly helped the comrades in Kalatas in their direct investigation of the practical work of the Party, the people's army and the revolutionary movement in a guerrilla zone. This has helped them a lot in their propaganda work in terms of coming up with correct descriptions about the concrete life, conditions and struggles of the people's army and the masses, the main target audience of Kalatas - thereby enriching the content and style of the newspaper's articles and illustrations.
This has also greatly helped in the continued remoulding of the writers of Kalatas (who are largely from the petty bourgeoisie) and in developing their revolutionary consciousness and militancy as well as in keeping them down-to-earth.
During times when the Kalatas staff is primarily engaged in mass work, it undertakes, together with other members of the mass work unit, all its attendant tasks - from the conduct of social investigation to launching tactical offensives. In having a tactical area of operations, comrades in Kalatas are also able to develop a base for their own operations and to broaden their contacts in neighboring town centers. As they expand their area of operations and contacts, they are able to depend on more and more activists and allies to assist them in various tasks. They are also able to tap more facilities needed for publishing Kalatas and in implementating other responsibilities.
For the past year and a half, Kalatas has been able to come out with its quarterly publications regularly (but belatedly). It has also come out with special issues this year and the year before.
Nevertheless, the staff is still in the process of determining how to correctly balance and efficiently blend its two responsibilitiess, to avoid pitting one against the other as much as possible. It is clear that the staff's main priority is to come out with Kalatas and perform other regional propaganda tasks, except during times of military emergency. While the staff publishes Kalatas within the framework of conducting mass work and employing guerrilla tactics, a high level of flexibility is necessary with respect to the staff's integration within the mass work unit and its participation in mass work, so as not to limit their ability to perform their regional propaganda tasks.
The staff has endeavored to perform the larger portion of its work with respect to writing and coming out with Kalatas while integrating with the mass work unit and overcoming limitations. They plan and discuss the content and flow of articles and write them by hand before encoding them into a computer. The staff also finds time for making illustrations and doing some amount of editing.
Nonetheless, every once in a while, the Kalatas staff needs to detach itself to undertake tasks that necessitate the use of a computer, to use facilities that run by electricity and to stay in a relatively stable place for periods ranging from a few days to more than a week. Now and then, they also have to use resources and services like the internet, which is available only in town centers or cities.
The staff still has to resolve its difficulty in accessing data, experiences and policies from different parts of the region's revolutionary organization and mass movement - from the provinces down to guerrilla fronts and white areas. In this regard, there is a need to overcome the limitation posed by the fact that the staff is confined to a particular guerrilla zone and faces attendant problems with respect to maintaining smooth correspondence lines from the guerrilla zone to other organs and units of the region from which they must gather information.
The regional propaganda staff in Southern Tagalog faces many challenges. There is much that can and needs to be done. Among these challenges are to come out with Kalatas issues on time and to decisively resolve the problems and issues that have been cited.
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