VOTE.
The people wearing masks that say VOTE and the people that say all these protesters better come out in November make me sick.
Like they can't understand that people can be extremely politically active and also not give a fuck about which ghoul is in the whitehouse.
Why would seeing a mask or a tweet make you sick? i dont think its really that big of a deal.
Social media isn't a dangerous place. It's kinda friendly when you let it be. How's your day going?
Because the people wearing them also don't give a shit if we have healthcare.
As for social media have you seen all the Nazi shit being spread online? This is a bad take.
Nothing /r/Neoliberal loves more than to blame German Fascism on KDP voters.
Hey buddy, they couldn't vote in the camps. This isn't a real strong comparison. Voting doesn't have to be the most powerful tool int he world to be something worth doing. Voting takes a half hour every year or two and your political activism is what you do for the rest of the year.
Vote for the least destructive person and then engage in direct action on behalf of good people. There isn't one election. We have a whole life's worth of voting ahead of us. Think about what it would mean for 10 million young voters to say "I will only ever vote for the furthest left candidate". Well if your job is being in office, your job becomes "moving to the left".
Kindness + Market Principles = Shrinking Capitalism until its a safe mini-game in a healthy society.
Did you just tell Lenin to engage in incremental electoralism? I think he's got a better plan already, bucko.
Did you just tell lenin that he can't find time to flip a switch once a year and still organize a revolution?
Dude I think we've been tricked into removing all context and making everything binary issues.
Not voting is not the same as organizing.
Voting is not the same as not organizing.
These two ideas have been connected by pop culture to dissuade people from voting AND organizing at the same time. Both are actually pretty easy if we just try to do em.
Not voting is not the same as organizing.
Voting is the very tale end of a long, expensive, and labor intensive process of GOTV. And GOTV is handicapped by the candidates you're GOTV for.
There was a point at which Organizing for Bernie and Organizing for Union Local 901 were equivalent. But when the top of the ticket is a DLC Democrat, I can't do both anymore. Campaigning for a Democrat puts me in opposition to my local labor organizers and activists, as the person I'm working to elect intends to undermine their efforts.
if we did everything we did for bernie, every election we'd win. but every person tries once or twice and then gives up and they end up changing nothing. Obama was gaslighting, the process doesn't work like that. Saviors aren't real. Workers are real. Lets do real work. Til we fucking die.
I don't know who this "we" is.
Every time I hear these claims, it's two activists grumbling at each other for not working hard enough. It's tiresome and myopic. Quite literally preaching to the choir.
Activism requires a certain degree of enthusiasm. People aren't going to rally behind a cause or a candidate that they don't care about. Whether you want to elevate this rallying point to "Savior" status is merely a point of rhetoric. The real consequence of activism lacking leadership is that it becomes unsustainable. Organizing is hard work and politicians who wet the bed don't inspire their neighbors to break their backs on their behalf.
I completely agree. I just think it actually matters if we're going for "positive influence" or "negative influence". I dont think activism needs leadership, it just needs to be positive. Good ideas spread for free and bad ideas need money and authority behind them.
What if you see a friend after a long shitty day and then have a serious complain about their boss. I think the nature of the algorithm and network architecture of the internet has been rewarding us for responding with:
"ya that's the typical plight of the proletariat"
But in real life you can you can see a massive difference between that statement and this question: "that sucks, I'm sorry your boss is doing that shit. I bet the job doesn't need to be as bad as he's making it. Can i help?"
I think that same difference that we notice when we help someone by just showing kindness and compassion in real life exists on the internet but since we can't see it, it doesn't create the same feedback loop. What if we keep studying finance, economics and history and just make one leap of faith:
Cooperating and helping people is truly rewarding.
Kindness as a pyramid scheme might actually be sustainable lol.
I dont think activism needs leadership, it just needs to be positive.
As someone who has been doing this for a little while, I have to assure you that you need leadership. Individuals with the initiative to make plans, get their friends excited, and then competently execute on them are not a dime a dozen. Striking the right combination of enthusiasm, social ability, and competence is difficult. And being willing to put yourself out there with the expectation that nobody will show up is hard.
I think that same difference that we notice when we help someone by just showing kindness and compassion in real life exists on the internet but since we can’t see it
Being generous to your friends and neighbors is good, but it isn't the seed of a large movement. You ultimately need to willingly participate in a system that affects people outside your perception.
Cooperating and helping people is truly rewarding.
It's rewarding when you experience a pay-off for your efforts. Pissing into the ocean isn't rewarding. Investing labor into an effort that fails isn't rewarding.
One reason I suspect Habitat for Humanity was so successful stemmed from the fact that you literally end up with a house at the end of it. But if a group of friends were to build a house that collapsed at the end of your effort, it would be hard to convince that group to come out a second time. Much less a tenth or a thousandth.
Part of what good leaders bring to the table is the ability to emotionally reward participation. It's a rarer attribute than people give credit for.
Individuals with the initiative to make plans, get their friends excited, and then competently execute on them are not a dime a dozen
I completely agree with this but I actually don't think that means "leader". I take initiative, i get my friends excited and competently execute tasts on their behalf. That doesn't mean I am my friends' 'LEADER'. I'm just helping them because I like them. We keep getting tricked into a top-down authoritarian hierarchy by pop culture because thats how predatory finance is structured and now its the only business model in the world.
What I'm building isn't a business so we don't need the same model. I don't need you to do everything I'm doing and follow my lead if you're doing your own thing towards the same goal. Our messaging needs to be identical but our optics and tactics can be totally different. The entire message is this:
Cooperation > Competition
Do anything where thats the message and you're a part of the movement. Just tweet out 10 things that might make people want to work together instead of fight each other and you're Leftist Steve Bannon. On the left, we can all be the Steve Bannon and none of us have to do coke or take orders from finance oligarchs, we just need to actually come together. If I'm wrong all you did was type a few sentences and click submit but if I'm right, we can change the world. Leftism is actually a no risk, high reward proposition if you do it without being paid.
That doesn’t mean I am my friends’ ‘LEADER’.
That's exactly what it means. You're the But-For cause of their participation. You are the perverbal Vanguard.
We keep getting tricked into a top-down authoritarian hierarchy by pop culture because thats how predatory finance is structured and now its the only business model in the world.
Authoritarianism isn't something humans invented in the last generation. And even then, there's a huge difference between taking initiative and taking command. Showing leadership doesn't mean becoming a dictator, it means becoming a rallying point for collective action. And yes, every group has some minority of participants in that role. Some individual that is striking out farther than the herd and guiding them in a given direction.
Cooperation > Competition
Even cooperatives require some level of entrepreneurship. The big distinction between capitalism and communism isn't the absence of authority but the distribution of rewards.
entrepreneurship
Okay but if you don't buy into the whole ayn randian bullshit narrative that there a select few "CEO types" and we're all "supposed to work for them" then you realize everyone can be an entrepreneur. You're doing capitalisms job for itself by convincing yourself you need to submit to authority or make others submit to you if you want to help.
We're trying to fight. We're trying to help. If fighting helps, then lets do that but how are we actually fighting and how it is it actually helping?
btw im not suggesting you campaign for biden and thats my point. you dont have campaign for him to vote for him. organize for your union as often as you can but one day in november, do this other thing for 20 minutes.
Do you think that you "not voting" is the same as helping disenfranchised black voters ? This isn't a binary issue. Vote for Biden and then lets impeach him for voter suppression. Thats the most optimal strategy for workers rights going forward.
As workers we don't have a carrot or a stick, we have both. Both tools have value but in different context. Social media uses a network architecture that makes hating something and loving it just as valuable but the real world isn't like that. Positive engagement actually leads to more change. That doesn't mean it'll instantly create a utopia but there are only 3 voting strategies that can have a real world effect this cycle:
Voting for Biden
Voting for Trump
Not Voting
Lets game it out and see how those different strategies might actually help. I think Biden is just the most practical move.
Do you think that you “not voting” is the same as helping disenfranchised black voters
I mean i'm literally working with a prison abolitionist group, soi 'm doing more for disenfanchised black people than simply voting. Also nothing disenfranchises people more than to elect someone they don't like and doesn't care about them, or someone who wrote a crime bill who put most of them in prison and literally took away their right to vote. LMFAO did you really just try to use Joe BIDEN as a reason to "help disenfranchised black people" like he didn't fucking cause this problem?
lets impeach him for voter suppression.
LMAO this is not going to happen
[voting ]Thats the most optimal strategy for workers rights going forward
The workers rights understander has logged on
I kinda think nearly all of us are here because we want to help workers but that we've all been tricked into never caring, never trying and just being sarcastic edge lords. I mean everything I say. I'm done with sarcasm on social media. It doesn't work the way we thought it did.
Shout out to all the comrades tricked by Tara Reade and Biden's glowing endorsement of not voting for him because they believe her.
I was "tricked" into not caring abput the presidency after becoming a prison abolitionist and watching the interview where Biden refused to apologize for or acknowledge the harmful outcome of the crime bill, saying "there were no problems with the bill". during the same interview he told black people they weren't black if they didn't vote for hin. Fucking social media, tricking people into having less enthusiasm by... quoting candidates directly.
