One of the people I already asked to help with setting up this PSL branch, I met through our local Food Not Bombs and he's legit the only person I've ever heard openly admit to being a Marxist around here that wasn't tied to a meme or a joke. We've had 2 discussions so far about Marxism and it's so damn refreshing. I am not sure if he's on here but wouldn't be surprised with how he talks lol.
I recommended HB to someone who seemed fairly online/zoomer at my party meeting lol. They said they had heard of it but we're trying to be less online which didn't make me feel bad at all noooooo 🙃
If you are able to put the effort into it, you can probably start a chapter for your preferred org in your area. I'm in the early stages of doing that for the PSL. I know we have at least a dozen or so like-minded people here and more will peobsbly start coming out of hiding but I'm gonna be putting in the effort to get them together. It's not gonna be easy work though.
I sort of consider those I've had frequent convos on here as internet friends but I'm not sure offline would be the best idea lol. Wary for sure. Like if I meet people out and about that are leftists and find out later they are on here, that's a bit different.
tbh I would love to do a meetup and since I don't think Hexbear has a tremendous amount of revolutionary potential it would be a waste of the fed's time to show up to it. Like let's be real we'd just end up playing board games or something not sabotaging pipelines.
Revolutionary potential is such nonsense, do you really think america has that? Hexbears fucking fantastic for organizing mutual aid and general "networking" stuff. I know at least one user salted his workplace via here he told me about it, and I've housed homeless trans people via here. We can't do Revolution but we can help other commies and form solid groups that combat the worst excesses of capitalism.
I don't think Hexbear has a tremendous amount of revolutionary potential
It is important to make this point loudly and often. This is a site on a federated network run by administration who are still finding their feet rather than experienced operators of secure websites. (No offense intended at all FWIW, but we don't even have a warrant canary afaik, let alone the recently stark lack of transparency in almost all things. I stand corrected see CARCOSA's reply.)
There have already been security scares with other federated sites intended for frequently targeted minorities having servers seized during unrelated raids. The legal precedent in the US and many other places is that evidence not pertinent to the being investigated crime during a raid can still be used as a jump-off point to open new investigations into other crimes exposed.
And it's not one server you have to worry about the security of once you start federating with other sites, it's a whole network of amateurs running servers with dubious security and unknown allegiances. Hexbear and the fediverse as it stands today should not be considered anything more than a social hub for people with similar sensibilities to share news and shitpost.
DO NOT POST ABOUT REAL LIFE OR COOL ACTIVITIES.
This is a shitposting website and the more we forget that the faster we run towards disaster.
Internet is srs bzns, hexbear is not.
But also it IS fed shit to organise a meetup. Don't do that. Join an org. Make real friends. Play board games. Form affinity groups. Use your imagination from there.
I think it would be disappointing tbh. better to just organize in your area, if there are cool hexbears in your area you'll eventually run into them doing that.
I'm already afraid of running into one of you irl during my offline shit but also if someone made a local meetup it would be a snub not to show so please nobody do this in my city.
Maybe not fed but literally zero praxis. Hexbear is a world wide thing so meeting up to do anything beyond socialize would have to be extremely broad. But we also have so few members that we wouldn't be able to accomplish anything with an actual in-person meet.
So, it's just a meetup with vaguely left-leaning folks but you can get that with 100 different orgs that aren't Hexbear.
maybe be safer to have some way to ID each other at podcast live shows in the leftist pod ecosystem
chapo live show, trueanon, well there's your problem, etc
i know probably mostly libs at those things so i dunno maybe we can make bear noises or something at each other. ask if someone is involved in ursine activities
I yearned for something similar in the past but at this point I have resigned myself to solitude and will spend my time building a wall of contempt between myself and humanity
imo biggest threat would be getting doxxed. i live in a rural area it would be quite bad for me if it got out that i was a communist, I'm lucky my family has taken it as well as they have
Dunno but the CarsandComrades folks from the Cars and Comrades podcast have occasionally met up with a listener or two and they seemed to have a grand ol' time.