Thread by @errantlabour

Those who are failing so badly at organising the launch of Your Party approached us in Bristol a couple of weeks ago and asked us to book a venue that would hold 1-2k people for the regional assembly which was going to happen in 3 weeks time. They said book it and we'll pay

Needless to say it was a ridiculous ask. The square meterage for that many people in an assembly format would be 5000+, the exhibition halls at the stadium is 3500. After getting agreement that the timeline wasn't realistic and that it could be pushed to Nov we started to search

A few days later we were told the budget was only £2k. This was to cover the venue and potentially catering. Anyone who has ever organised a medium event let one a large one would know that's ridiculous. We pushed back, we were told we weren't trying hard enough. We continued

Knowing that when if we got any responses from venues that we would be able to show that what they were asking for didn't exist in that budget. We heard back from the stadium they could take us, space for 850, £8.5k for the day, we negotiated down to £6.5k and took it backo

Obviously it was turned down because of budget or we would have to find the rest fo the cash ourselves. This all for a process that still hadn't been fully explained to discuss documents that hadn't been published. When issues of accessibility were raised, they were pushed back

To us to resolve. We're told that someone else might have found a venue that has been used before. There's only two of even moderate size that Corbyn ever visited in Bristol and one of them doesn't exist anymore, the other maybe holds 350 people. We dont get told where it isw

We explain that if we can be told then we will be able to flag any potential issues before stuff progresses. Nothing comes back. We continue to speak with venues, trying to make the impossible happen. Without a real brief, without any real say, time ticks away.

Next thing we see if that a Bristol venue has been announced. It's the place we've been using for local meetings already in the past few weeks, meetings that we have organised without a mass mailing list. A venue that we have paid for out of our own pockets. It holds 150 odd.

It's being advertised that 250 can attend. There's not a chance that they can seat that in the circles of 10 that they want to do. No one will be ae to hear anything alone have meaningful discussion. We ask wtf is going on and we're told once again that we just aren't trying

We don't care enough, we're too focussed on a venue that is out of budget (we didn't actually think the stadium was workable even when we did get a price and availability), that to expect any kind of money to be spent enabling democracy would require the party to be hedge fundeds

So now the "mass regional assembly" is going to be a room no bigger than that which we're already organising in, of only "party members" despite earlier claims it'd be anyone who signed up to the mailing list, in a format roundly criticised by the grassroots across the country

All this to stick to an arbitrary timeline imposed by those desperate to cling onto power and have an army of mute volunteers to go and doorknock for them to keep their seats come May. This is completely unacceptable and we're not having it. The party without us won't be shit

It's a shame cos there was such potential squandered by those who had already fumbled the bag last time we had a shot at something real and yet refuse to see their own inadequacies. We must fight to win something better than this. We will build a party and it will be ours

So join your local faction, I'm partial to @DemSocsYP but there's a fair few who are against the current state of play. Join your local grouping of activists, build and organise without the blessing of those on high. Stay informed w/ @SamuraiApology to work out how beat them