The erosion of public/community space is by design. American society is obsessed with private property and privatizing the commons. Nowhere to gather without spending money except a park or decrepit library or something.
Long term? Somehow push for an end or reduction of car-based infrastructure. Get leftists involved in organizing for better civic planning/zoning.
Short term? You got me. I've had some ideas about how to get involved with church groups, since those are often the only "third place" Americans have. They're sometimes the only people an American sees outside of work or their family.
Among ourselves? Anyone up for a board game night or something? lol
Short term? You got me. I’ve had some ideas about how to get involved with church groups, since those are often the only “third place” Americans have. They’re sometimes the only people an American sees outside of work or their family.
I mean, one thing is possibly to reconstruct the function & form of church-based organizational structures within the confines of an explicitly left-wing ideology. Like if you had a guy who's job was to read Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. and then to go up & read passages of their works to a crowd & then find a specific way to tie those passages into their own day-to-day struggles; or into the specific struggles of the specific members of your congregation or whatever. That might actually work in some weird way, idk.
Then again, I think one possible problem with socialist organizing within the modern imperial core is that honestly a lot of people who choose to be socialists in the imperial core do so, because they are actually temperamentally highly individualistic & don't like following the established norms of the society that they're born into. Which is not to necessarily say that they're wrong to dislike the established norms of Western Imperialist Hegemony, but like there's a reason why it's a well-established truism that getting people to organize IRL is like herding cats.
The erosion of public/community space is by design. American society is obsessed with private property and privatizing the commons. Nowhere to gather without spending money except a park or decrepit library or something.
What can be done to push back against this? Anyone thinking of saying "nothing, give up" is wasting their time.
Long term? Somehow push for an end or reduction of car-based infrastructure. Get leftists involved in organizing for better civic planning/zoning.
Short term? You got me. I've had some ideas about how to get involved with church groups, since those are often the only "third place" Americans have. They're sometimes the only people an American sees outside of work or their family.
Among ourselves? Anyone up for a board game night or something? lol
I mean, one thing is possibly to reconstruct the function & form of church-based organizational structures within the confines of an explicitly left-wing ideology. Like if you had a guy who's job was to read Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. and then to go up & read passages of their works to a crowd & then find a specific way to tie those passages into their own day-to-day struggles; or into the specific struggles of the specific members of your congregation or whatever. That might actually work in some weird way, idk.
Then again, I think one possible problem with socialist organizing within the modern imperial core is that honestly a lot of people who choose to be socialists in the imperial core do so, because they are actually temperamentally highly individualistic & don't like following the established norms of the society that they're born into. Which is not to necessarily say that they're wrong to dislike the established norms of Western Imperialist Hegemony, but like there's a reason why it's a well-established truism that getting people to organize IRL is like herding cats.
Hey, Settlers of Catan is pretty good once you get past trying to explain the rules to someone.