I live in a country that's fascist as fuck, so activists get locked up all the time, and my boyfriend says to me, when I'm just starting to get involved – not to practice opsec, or express worries but just not to associate myself with anyone who's ever been arrested. Not convicted. This is everyone doing anything meaningful.
Eventually, I realise his conception of doing good in the world and I quote: "You can acknowledge collective action problems without choosing to be the one who bells the cat." The threshold, for the amount of personal risk he seems acceptable to help other people out is... it's negligible. He'd never work at organisation with activists who've been arrested before because, wait for this, you might have a hard time getting hired if you're associated with them. (Not even the risk of getting arrested.) We're bougie asf. PMC.
He's basically left of centre when the times are good and right when it affects him personally.
It's gonna end us.
He’s basically left of centre when the times are good and right when it affects him personally.
so he's a liberal?
does he want you to love him, love him, love him?
hes a liberal?Yeah like the last statement acknowledges, I recognise that. I think if someone lives their life in that much fear or like those are their priorities – forcing them to align alongside mine by the risk they're exposed through our relationship... That's not love. It's still hard to deal with.
once you start having relationships with romantic guerrilla leftists it’s pretty hard to go back to liberals ngl
on the bright side, no matter what happens, you get to know you were The Cool One
"without choosing to be the one who bells the cat" is something I've never heard before and am not quite understanding. Can you explain?
It's an aesop fable. A group of mice decide they'll all be much better off if they collectively work to tie a bell around the local cat's neck so they can hear it coming and thus they won't get eaten. The mouse who has to actually tie the bell is the one stuck "belling the cat" and that individual mouse has an insanely dangerous, daunting task at great personal risk that the other mice will never have to take on if he's successful.
had a similar situation. my SO and I are both big leftists, but when the initial wave of George Floyd protests were going on, I was scared and thought we shouldn’t go downtown after seeing how police were responding.
we ended up going to one and being smart about it. but it’s tough balancing the safety of loved ones with engaging in the activism you want to be involved in