Hey, is anyone familiar with Revolutionary Communists of America? (https://communistusa.org/) It is separate than Revolutionary Communist USA which was confusing to me. Anyway they are organizing more and I'm sure if you live in a bigger city you have seen their posters or seen them organizing.
A while back I saw them organizing in my areas. I went to three meetings as well as a small demonstration in my city. The last time I went they discussed joining the party and that they asked for a days wage. Although I had already mentioned my disability in passing I felt a little embarrassed and decided to text my contact later about it. A days wage for me is about 5 dollars as I make about 200 dollars a month in gig work in addition to my state disability benefits. I told them I was happy to pay that much and continue coming to the meetings and join the party but that I wanted to be clear upfront that my disability would restrict my participation in some of the more public facing things, agitation, etc.
My contact who had been texting me weekly about these meetings for a few months completely ghosted me after texting them about this. While I felt bad about it it's not exactly shocking as I know well enough now that I can and will encounter ableism in all sorts of communities which seem like I shouldn't.
After doing some research it looks like they do have a history of some organizational stuff that doesn't sound great like sexual abuse claims in the Canadian branch. What is weird to me is that they don't seem to have a way to contact anyone centrally if issues like this come up. Maybe this is by design?
I am not interested in joining this group anymore but I felt like I wanted to let the party know that this is what goes on in the local cells. Or maybe just put this out to the internet in case anyone encounters something similar. Anyone had any similar experiences with these guys? I didn't notice any red flags until this happened.
That last paragraph was exactly my experience with them in my medium sized town in Canada. I attended a few weeks of meetings when I first started out trying to engage in politics and not just read theory, they are the only real option in my town. They seemed like people who were pretty engaged with the ideas at first but the whole time I was being constantly pressured to become a paying member and the only things we ever really discussed in earnest were how we can "build the party" AKA get more people to join.
Party activity outside of weekly meetings was entirely putting up posters and doing recruitment speeches. They even gave me a pamphlet about how community building is dumb and cringe or something, idk I only skimmed it. In the one issue of the party newspaper they gave me the focus was half shitting on AES, especially the post Lenin USSR, and the other half was all about how many members each branch of the party has accrewed across canada. Obviously building a party base is important but like it shouldn't be the only thing focused on. Left after about a month. Definitely felt cult-y in retrospect.