flirted around with joining my city's branch of PSL in 2017 and 18. Went to a bunch of meetings, never became a candidate or full member or anything, just talked a lot with them and attended events.
While they were really pleasant, there was a very amateur feeling to all of it. Don't get me wrong, everyone I met was extremely pleasant and had noble intentions. What I mean is it seemed distinctly aimless and powerless. Most of what we did was meet in bars and cafes and do readings of the PSL's newspaper or talk about theory. They'd also occasionally meet up with a larger citywide protest or do charity work. Maybe my expectations are a little too high, but it never felt like anything was getting off the ground. It felt like being in a social club for discussing leftist viewpoints, so it wasn't much for me. I'm not exactly good at being social. I have shut-in tendencies and bad anxiety. I do better when I have doable tasks to complete, which they didn't have a whole lot of.
Maybe they've expanded since then and have become a more established presence and that's when I'd consider going back to actually join. I hope I don't sound like I'm on a high horse by the way. I'm also an amateur at these things and I fully understand that PSL and leftists in general have no real foothold where I live.
From what I've read, joining PSL can be vastly different depending on where you live due to the great deal of regional autonomy they have, so y'all's experiences may not match mine.
I was in an org where the term "productivist" was thrown around at a meeting as an insult. After I looked it up, and stopped laughing at the notion that flyering and some light mutual aid was "productivist", I left that org.
the people I knew weren't opposed to doing ground work, they just had no idea how to start or where to go, nor did there ever seem capacity to do much beyond talk about news. It was more of a resigned desultory confusion than any sort of ideological commitment against doing things
flirted around with joining my city's branch of PSL in 2017 and 18. Went to a bunch of meetings, never became a candidate or full member or anything, just talked a lot with them and attended events.
While they were really pleasant, there was a very amateur feeling to all of it. Don't get me wrong, everyone I met was extremely pleasant and had noble intentions. What I mean is it seemed distinctly aimless and powerless. Most of what we did was meet in bars and cafes and do readings of the PSL's newspaper or talk about theory. They'd also occasionally meet up with a larger citywide protest or do charity work. Maybe my expectations are a little too high, but it never felt like anything was getting off the ground. It felt like being in a social club for discussing leftist viewpoints, so it wasn't much for me. I'm not exactly good at being social. I have shut-in tendencies and bad anxiety. I do better when I have doable tasks to complete, which they didn't have a whole lot of.
Maybe they've expanded since then and have become a more established presence and that's when I'd consider going back to actually join. I hope I don't sound like I'm on a high horse by the way. I'm also an amateur at these things and I fully understand that PSL and leftists in general have no real foothold where I live.
From what I've read, joining PSL can be vastly different depending on where you live due to the great deal of regional autonomy they have, so y'all's experiences may not match mine.
I was in an org where the term "productivist" was thrown around at a meeting as an insult. After I looked it up, and stopped laughing at the notion that flyering and some light mutual aid was "productivist", I left that org.
the people I knew weren't opposed to doing ground work, they just had no idea how to start or where to go, nor did there ever seem capacity to do much beyond talk about news. It was more of a resigned desultory confusion than any sort of ideological commitment against doing things
deleted by creator