I'm a CS student, I have some time before I graduate and have kind of dipped my toes in various things without specializing in anything. I would like to know what would be useful for the movement, so that I can use my skills to contribute.

And before people say "everything is useful"...well yeah but it's nice and fulfilling to have specific ideas I can work on learning/building myself.

Also where can I find leftist open source projects? I know lemmy and this website for one are open source but not sure of others.

  • GenXen [any, any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    None. Want to benefit the leftist movement? Switch majors to something in the Humanities.

    Signed: 20+ IT worker

    • MaoistLandlord [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I don’t think humanities will benefit anyone either lol. Look at all the so called communist academics. Few are actually in touch with people.

      I thought about it some more, and I think some journalism might be beneficial. You might expose corruption and obtain insider sources who can provide information to help organizers. I imagine a lot of union drives would’ve been silenced by the media if it weren’t for insiders exposing attempts at surveillance and manipulation ( remember Amazon colluding with traffic light companies to make people late for union voting? )

      Realistically, the only way to benefit is to actually talk and interact with people on a ground level regardless of your major. Technology will be useful in times of intense organizing like strikes and protests where infiltrators are a plenty. Teaching people basic privacy and evasion techniques will help even if the feds already have crackers and back doors for the encryptions

      But other than that, most projects are not going to help anybody. If you’re actually serious about benefitting the movement, you’ll get a decent job and not give a shit about owning a house or car as an “investment” (as in, use the objects as intended, not speculate with them) and instead use your wealth to buy/cook food, buy clothes, contribute to event costs, or help strikers pay bills and groceries.

      Many people are adverse to communism of socialism, but the truth is when push comes to shove, they will support whoever is giving them food and water. Look at Ohio. Many of them welcomed Trump even though he was responsible for deregulation, but he brought food and water while Biden was in Ukraine. Performance like that will only garner seldom support until you get tired of pretending to care. If you prove that you actually care and are willing to give up something to benefit others, people will either come to support or tolerate you.