It grounds you. It humbles you. It forces you out of the insular lives we're all leading. It gives you the ability to relate to the people who should be the focus of your politics, to actually speak their language in a way that they understand, instead of speaking in code like a political weirdo, a perishable skill.

There are studies claiming that a quantifiable drop in empathy for the poor and working class is correlated with increasing wealth. Wonder is there a similar effect correlated with increased education, even political education?

It gets you offline for a moment. It gives you some intergenerational solidarity. Some inter-class interaction. Just some fucking interpersonal community activity outside your friend group, which a lot of people have the ability to avoid currently and which was crucial to any succesful left projects in the past.

Even running errands for vulnerable people during a pandemic is something, there's probably an org doing this in your area. There are people out there that aren't totally unreachable and this is a great way to connect with them.