I've gotten to meet a few people from here irl and they were all awesome, I'd love to meet more of our comrades and I expect there's a number of us who feel that way. Not would it be cool to hang out but as much as we wish it were posting isn't praxis however meeting offline makes it much easier to actually accomplish something. My thought was either a sticky thread or new com. People who are down to meet can post their nearest major city and then handle everything else through DMs, that should keep the doxing to a minimum. Anyone else interested in the idea or am I just being dumb?
Yea anybody in a city where there would be other Hexbears willing to meet up would for sure have a decent organizing presence
Though I will say the idea of befriending people you organize with low-key feels like office teammate friends
Complaining about an org's culture is one of the strongest bonding activities you can have. Just ask all the ML/MLM/Lux/CCs/Syn/etc stuck in the local Trot org over the years 1980-2015.
Shitting on Trots isn't even slightly controversial everybody hates them haha
Eh, I know a bunch of ones that are pretty good (China Meiville for example is great). And Trotsky is well worth reading, particularly his pre-1925 stuff.
But the stereotype of the reflexively anti-AES squabbling splitting newspaper club exists for a reason.
They really need to chill with the newspaper pushing especially in events/actions they didn't even help organize
British Trots turning up to a cost of living protest and handing out single piece of toilet paper sized pamphlets covered in tiny writing that are a diatribe about how China is imperialist and Stalin betrayed the Russian revolution to impoverished single parents attending their first political event like:
Not to say that leftists shouldn't be an influence at more moderate events but they always go about it in the worst way lmao
We should be more specific here. As I see it pushing their unrelated publications / promoting their org unprompted is a kind of tailism, a tendency to solely insert oneself in unfolding events. But that isn't to say that we should escew agitation as a whole as the opposite pole of tailism is opportunism. Rather, agitation, pamphleting at a protest, etc. should be focused on connecting the specific issue to a broader revolutionary line. In a sentence: 'from the masses, to the masses.'
Definitely agree. Other ML and Maoist parties generally give out pamphlets promoting directly related open forums and events which is great but Trots just try to sell their monthly issue newspaper of like 20 pages to any event they show up to
I mean that's fair, but in my experience they're also the nly ones who actually show up consistently.
This is not actually true, the vast majority of posters do not join orgs and the vast majority of organizers do not post outside of mainstream social media (Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Tiktok).
I joined a local org with 30+ members and none of them have ever even heard of Lemmy before
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I'd say it depends on the org. This is a bit uncharitable to all involved but some orgs are described as having the vibe of an IRL reddit meetup (often DSA in my experience). If you go to those ones I bet you'd find a few posters. I also met a few old r/CTH users at a PSL meetup. But yeah if you're just trying to find like-minded people join an org. Shop around to figure out whether you like the vibe, which imo is more important that whether you totally agree with them at this stage of left-wing development in western countries. You should actually look forward to meeting your comrades, not have an "ugh I would rather..." attitude.
I can't really speak for other people, but I was involved with orgs before I joined Hexbear. Also, maybe considering joining more orgs and meeting more people. I feel like joining one of the national and well known orgs would have a better chance of meeting one of us. If I remember right a few orgs are either/or, but the IWW should be chill. About 80,000 people voted for PSL in the last presidential, and there are like 1,000 consistent Hexbears + Lemmygraders, so if you meet above 80 IRL people there is a good chance at least one of them is a Lemmy user.