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.
But wait, OP said Amber is "cancelling" mutual aid but having watched the video, the content of OP's post itself is largely agreeing with her critique from the video, NOT slinging mud at Amber. Sorry this is getting pedantic I just feel like you're both in full agreement lol
I was using "mud-slinging" as a synonym for "dig." They said this post was meant to be a "dig" at "too online" Leftists, including themselves.
The communication breakdown happened because OP said there is value to doing charity, but no one was disagreeing with that. I read their comment "Amber is cancelling mutual aid" as a continuation of a trend on the Left to intentionally misrepresent any criticism of our current tactics and strategy.
This has absolutely gotten too pedantic. I just want to talk about strategy and tactics without getting "log off" as a response.
Amber.
Amber.