:hexbear-retro: Time to organize, libs
We’re going to create a guide on how to start organizing by doing so as a group. We’ll use the experiences and questions of participants to form a living document (likely a wiki) that will bring people from start to finish on getting a community network up and running.
:arm-L: Challenge :arm-R:
Do at least one of the following by August 8th:
- Search for existing org chapters in your area and contact one of their members expressing interest
- Find to a single person you know who is politically aware and would dedicate a couple hours a week to organizing with you
- Plan a small gathering of people where you can get together, eat, and pitch the idea of starting to organize
:what: How does this help?
With sufficiently large groups of people coordinating with each other, we can achieve large effects with relatively small individual actions. However, organizations will often be very small for extended periods of time and consist of people only donating a few hours a week of their time. If an organization already exists in your area, this work has been done for you and you should be thankful. Otherwise, an easy start is a good way to beat decision paralysis. “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step."
:gigachad: Goals
What goals do you have for organizing? Do you have a hard time understanding how organizing can help you accomplish those goals?
:blob-help: Barriers
Are you having trouble with this week’s challenge? Are you having trouble with other projects you have going on?
:picard-excited: Successes
People who are currently organizing, what successes have you had over the last week?
I think my best advice is to assume good faith in a vast majority of the people you interact with socialist or not and learn to read the room. This will make your mental heath better, and will make it easier for people to actually listen to you. Also try not to invent someone and get mad at them.
This is legitimately great advice. I've seen too many comrades fall into the trap of writing people off way too soon. The goal of organizing is to educate and radicalize. If they were already educated and radicalized, we wouldn't need to organize.
Lots of people who have certain opinions don't actually know why they have those opinions, if you ever run into that, don't correct them, ask them why. Make them defend their opinions and then when they're unable to, offer them a hand and guide them in the right direction.
The best thing you can do is to elevate contradictions. Keep bringing up things that don't make sense and listen to people when they have grievances. Don't lock yourself behind books, you don't need to cite Lenin at everyone even if it's relevant. Use Lenin, reword Marx and Gramsci, take the ideas contained within those theories and make them accessible to people.
When they're upset enough and when they are able to understand and see the system that's oppressing them, that's when you can start recommending reading. When they have an unquenchable thirst for understanding of what lies they've been told and why.
That being said, the end goal isn't to have everyone reading books, it's to overthrow the established order and revolutionize our mode of production. Getting people on the same page and then getting them to act as a collective is the primary goal. If you're literally all alone, getting some people to read theory and be able to help you with that is useful, but there comes a point where the theory takes a backseat.
If anyone else is curious about this, I found some study notes on the street epistemology book How to Have Impossible Conversations that seem to summarize the major points of the text rather well: https://railean.net/index.php/how-to-have-impossible-conversations-notes
Further, I would also like to, again, recommend everyone read Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. And to remember the Zapatista slogan "lead by listening". That is all, thank you for your attention
One thing I want to advise people who are joining an org. Many parties or political orgs (especially Trotskyist, but sometimes MLs and MLMs) are made up of mostly students that they churn through completely every 2-3 years and require way more time than you might want to give. They can be quite pushy and if you give in you will burn out. One org I know requires at least 10 hours a week work from members, and push for more.
Either set boundaries quickly in radical orgs, or find an org that is either more sedate (like Unions or Labour/Green party left factions) or more tactically focused (mutual aid, community gardening, community movements.) Once you've gotten your feet wet and know you can take on more, you can join a radical org with experience under your belt.
I was given this advice several years ago. I didn't heed it. I paid for that choice: time, money, especially sanity.
Adding to it: In addition to choosing the "right" org for self, right now, and communicating boundaries, also communicate your expectations and why they're important to you.
If you’d like to be pinged to participate in the weekly challenges or megathreads, reply to this comment with your favorite emoji
I'm an extremely blackpilled doomer who knows there is less than zero hope for the western left to ever achieve anything of worth in the core. I've joined the IWW after treading this thread. It's a challenge to myself and my own beliefs.
get involved with your local GMB and uh, follow the politicking on Interwob, but try not to get too invested in it, because it is a shitshow.
people don't like to admit it, but the IWW is still in a long slow recovery from its lowest period where it was less than a hundred people keeping the whole thing going, and the ballooning membership in the last few years has brought a lot of dysfunction that, imho, is best remedied by a more engaged membership with a narrower focus.
Helping to muzzle the imperialist machine is an essential element of us winning, comrade. Make a multipolar world inevitable.
I'm moving across the country in a few weeks so I've been looking up orgs in my new area, I'll be out in the middle of nowhere but so far I've at least been able to find a chapter of Food Not Bombs pretty close by and that should be a pretty good starting point if I can't find anything else on my own :tofu-cool:
Holy Shit Su Bingtian of China ran a 9.83 100m. He just shattered the previous Asian record of 9.91. What a monster.
Not the megathread, comrade, but I changed to name to hopefully lessen confusion. Su Bingtian sounds cool though
I'm planning on joining a good org when I move to a city in a few months. As far as I know there's no organizations that operate in my area that are explicitly leftist, and no orgs are actually meeting at the moment anyway. I suppose I could get together with a few friends, but at that point we're a group of teenagers with no leadership or goals, and we're all leaving the town in a few months. I suppose I'll look into it anyway
a group of teenagers with no leadership or goals sounds like a pretty solid affinity group to me
Because the situation has been getting worse and worse, younger and younger people are forced to admit the reality of the world. You say your group lacks experience. That's true. Part of that is lacking the experience to understand what a like-minded, motivated group of teenagers can do in a short period of time. Even if your group decides to sit and talk, to understand one another better, that's valuable.
some kind of repository of local orgs would be good with links to social medias an such. I know many in my area I work with, but I imagine a lot of groups get lost in the noise people might want to join
We can put that together for a lot of the US and international ones. People from other countries, any help compiling a list of decent orgs would be appreciated
oh hell yeah, I'd be very happy to help. I know a shit load of British leftist orgs
If you're in the UK and not a current or former member of the orgs on this list, then you're not in an org doing anything to threaten capital.
most of these groups no longer exist, as all this stuff is about police action from the 60s to 2000. since 2015 there has been a HUGE explosion of left wing groups in the UK, that I have no doubt the cops have infiltrated, but are not on this list as that shit is probably still classified
lmao, I have been uh cough involved one could say with like half these groups. glad to know I'm doing enough to be on the cops radar probably
Hey comrades, ive been organizing with DSA for a few years now as part of the communist formation and am pretty well versed on all matters regarding DSA. If anyone has any questions AMA. Id strongly recommend getting involved, and i put together this w some info if its helpful to anyone: https://dsa.carrd.co
It seems like none of my dues would go to my local chapter if I join the DSA using a annual payment. Even if I use a monthly payment, which is significantly more expensive, only a small portion of those dues are sent to my local chapter. And, the larger the chapter, seemingly the higher the proportion of dues are allocated to the chapter, which seems totally counterintuitive.
I can tolerate the... authoritarianism in this facet, so long as I can also speak with my dollar. For instance, I'll pay an annual membership, then donate ten times that amount to my local chapter. But, if I were designing this system with the goals that seem inherent in it, I'd have thought of this.
Every time I bring this up to a DSA member (online) they feed me absolute bullshit. I'm not talking about how they believe it should work. It's my voice. I wish to speak with my dollar. I'd like guidance.
ah yeah i think the cheapest u can sign up with for national dues is $2 a year. i think i do like $20 a year and $5 a month locally and then donate directly to help fund different campaigns. The org has some possible money problems as far as i know but nothing too serious, and we cant exactly cut staff either cause theyre all needed, but thats where most of the money goes. There is a financial report that came out a few months ago that explains the budget well. i thought national gives a % of all dues to smaller local chapter to help them grow, large ones dont get much if anything cause they can raise their own money locally. or is that backwards? i would think most active members put more money into local than national anyways. I dont think theres many ppl who have concerns about the budget and all that, i wouldnt worry about it too much theres too much other shit to figure out tbh
I think you've got it backwards. The larger the chapter, the larger the proportion of dues they retain. You're doing what everyone else does: Trying to convince me the distribution of dues is justified. You've done better than anyone else by providing a financial report and budget. But, that's not what I asked for. I want to know if I can make a donation to my local chapter that nationals may SEE, but not TOUCH. The required dues are negligible compared to what I have to possibly donate. I wish to be able to support nationals and my local chapter in whatever proportions I wish, not the proportions someone else wishes. If I could, I'd like to be able to earmark part of what I give for certain initiatives. Basically, I can rationalize giving more if I have some reasonable influence over what happens, afterwards.
Regardless of if you know the answer, am I making sense, at least?
oh i see, yeah national doesnt take any cut from local dues if thats what you're asking. you should also note how your own chapter distributes those funds though, there might be better individual donations you could do to specific campaigns youre interested in. Ive donated directly to fund stuff like mutual aid and stuff like that for my local chapter
I dug into this. I'm getting the feeling that there was significant internal debate over authoritarian vs. libertarian. That debate couldn't be resolved, shouldn't be resolved. The rules were codified in such a manner they appear to be fighting with one another.
The good news is, it definitely seems I can do what I wish to do.
Search for existing org chapters in your area and contact one of their members expressing interest
If any of you dorks are in Australia join the ACP! We could always use more comrades and as well as being an active ML party, we do community work like street kitchens, it’s very rewarding.
